


Live Trap

by SpyVsTailor



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Scarecrow - Freeform, and cats, but like with two assholes, catwoman - Freeform, it's like a forced roommate thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-08-20 13:24:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpyVsTailor/pseuds/SpyVsTailor
Summary: Halloween night was chaotic, Jonathan Crane AKA the Scarecrow wasn't expecting it to be so chaotic that he was blasted from the rooftop of a three story building. Selina Kyle AKA Catwoman, isn't really the nurturing type, she just sort of got this broken and half dead Scarecrow thrust upon her. Now forced to care for him until his bones mend, she finds she isn't comfortable with the idea of sharing her personal space with the Master of Fear.





	1. Morning Has Broken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DittyWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DittyWrites/gifts).



> Look guys, I don't write ScaredyCat, but I wanted to write something for my bud acapelladitty over on tumblr, so this is where you find us, standing at the crossroads of Sentimental-Gift Street and What-the-Fuck Avenue. We may take a detour down Hate-Sex Boulevard with a side trip to Old-Married-Couple-Bickering Lane. The rating could very well change.

##  Chapter One: Morning Has Broken

**Crane**

Above Gotham the sky was turning from midnight purple to lilac, tinged on the horizon with orange and licks of fire as the sun crested over the waters of the bay.

Before awareness, there was pain, fierce and striking through his entire body.

Lying twisted and broken on the pavement of the alley, Jonathan Crane licked his upper lip, tasting the copper assault of blood and tried to take inventory of his faculties.

Left leg, twisted and broken, ribs bruised, perhaps also broken, nose most certainly broken, the orbit of his right eye crushed or swollen so badly it hindered his vision. Right shoulder dislocated, right wrist sprained.

Jaw?

He worked it left then right.

Not broken, but bruised pretty badly.

He was carrion waiting for the vultures to pick clean his carcass.

Rolling his head to the side, Crane spied Craw. Glittering, black marble eye on him, wings fluttering anxiously as the crow strutted around on the cold cement.

Well, at least his flesh would be consumed by a friend.

The night had begun so well, Halloween was in full force and he was King of Samhain. But everyone, it seemed, in Gotham's underworld, was vying for the night and it had fast descended into chaos.

For Batman to have left him where he landed, no he would have never left Crane to lay in the alley had someone else not blown up a nearby bank, the force knocking Crane from the rooftop, where he hit the fire escape, before rolling off onto the closed lid of a dumpster and into the place where he was now about to die.

Shock had set in quickly, the pain numbing and suddenly Crane was drifting, his body hovering over the cement.

This had happened earlier, he had passed out before, he recalled the instance before the dawn when he was roused from his senseless state.

His vision blurred, the edges turning grey and then black, as he slipped back into the warmth of slumber.

 

* * *

 

“Why should he be my problem?”

“Lina, we all know your place is bigger. More room for his long assed legs to stretch.”

“Harley has more medical experience.”

“Just the basic stuff mostly. First aid more like. Besides Mister J wouldn't approve, he kind of hates other cocks in his hen house, you know?”

Crane woke from his haze as the cool morning air hit his sweat soaked face as someone removed his burlap mask with a gentle hand on the back of his skull, holding it up while another tugged his mask free.

He blinked up at whoever was touching him, but couldn't make out any features in the shadows of the dim morning. As whoever it was that had removed his mask leaned over him to toss it aside, he got an eyeful of breasts and leather.

It wasn't the worst thing he had ever woken up to. She certainly smelled appealing.

Someone snorted in laughter. “I said cocks!”

“Shh,” a third voice said. “He's waking up.”

“We should drop him off at the hospital, let him be their problem,” the pair of breasts murmured in a dark, velvet tone.

“As much as that idea appeals to me, we can't turn him in.”

“That's right! It's against the code.”

“Code?”

Someone touched Crane's left leg to assess his injuries, sending pain up his entire body rapidly followed by more of that handy numbness that came with shock and he slipped away again.

 

* * *

 

There was too much light.

Crane instinctively raised his hand to shield his eyes, his right shoulder squealed absolute bloody murder and he dropped the arm immediately, trying to gather himself to sit up.

There was a fiery streak of pain, like lightening striking his entire body as he shifted and Crane growled.

“Easy, you're going to undo all Harley's hard work.” Someone snarled from his feet.

The light was killed and the room thrown into a dim, semi-twilight state.

In the faint haze, Crane could make out three figures all moving in towards him like predatory animals going in for the kill.

“Hell of a fall, Professor,” Harley Quinn exclaimed, flumping onto the bed at his hip, slurping on a icy drink from one of the neon hells of Gotham's street corners. The sort of place where reality went to die in the dim hours of the early, early morning with the crackheads and the junkies getting handjobs behind the dumpsters and the delinquents and drunks buying cheap booze and candy inside from dead eyed cashiers who were beaten down by life.

The other two figures, Catwoman and Poison Ivy, both remained standing over him, Pamela's arms were crossed and Selina's hand was placed on her generously curved hip.

All of the women were in full gear and it startled him to see the Valkyries come to fetch him back to Valhalla. For a moment he realized that if he wasn't dead, he soon would be at their hands.

He was in immense pain. Even his thoughts were as jumbled as his battered body.

There were a few things that registered in the racing mind of the beaten man.

He was in a soft, luxurious bed in a clean, well decorated penthouse, he was bandaged and splinted and bound and patched and he was naked under very thin, very soft bamboo sheets.

Swallowing thickly, his throat tight with pain and dehydration, he croaked, “where am I?”

“Selina's joint!” Harley chirped. “Oh, she's not happy. So you'd better be a good house guest.”

As if to prove her point, Selina sighed, remaining at the foot of his bed, hand on her hip, face drawn and stoic.

Crane stared down at her as she stared up at him and as he bridged the gap of space between them with his eyes, he became once more acutely aware of how vulnerable he was beneath the thin, almost entirely too thin sheets.

Where was the thick blanket or comforter? What sort of women slept with nary a blanket?

Again he swallowed, smacking his lips a little. “Water?” He asked. The question wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but open for whomever decided to take mercy on him.

Harley thrust her icy drink at him, straw poking his nose in her haste.

She smiled a red stained grin, the drink leaving its horrid mark on her teeth and tongue.

“Never mind,” he returned. “I'd rather die.”

Pamela wandered off with a huff.

Wanting to cross his arms defensively, he recalled the pain in his right arm and settled for moving his good hand to cover his stomach, tempted to cover himself lower, but resisting the motion. It seemed his right leg was working fine, along with his left arm, it was just his everything else that felt like it had been tossed about in a hurricane.

“What happened?” He finally asked Selina, since Harley was too engrossed in her drink and Pamela was absent.

“Seems like you fell from a third story building and lived to tell the tale.”

A memory flashed in his mind, the fall, the weightlessness, the crack as his ribs hit the railing of the fire escape, the jarring thud as his body hit the top of the dumpster, then the cold roughness of the asphalt as he came to a dead stop.

“Isiah 14:12,” Crane murmured. “And why am I in your apartment, Selina?”

Pamela returned, thrusting a glass of water at him as though it offended her.

He took it with his good hand, but the remaining tremors from his morning spent lying on the cold asphalt prevented him from drinking enjoyably, causing Harley to take pity on him and help him drink, sticking her straw into the glass, red from the drink swirling pink into his water.

He drank anyways.

“There was a vote,” Pamela snarled. “Two against one.”

“I voted to help him,” Selina replied. “You both voted me to be host.”

Crane scowled. He didn't want to be there anymore than they wanted him to be, but unfortunately he was too broken to move far on his own. He was – and he loathed to think it – trapped like an unwanted raccoon in a live trap.

“Death would have been too merciful,” he grumbled, the idea of being stuck in Selina Kyle's bed – a place that had possibly seen too many naked men – was like a bitter powder taken with nothing to chase it down.

God, he hoped she washed her bedding regularily.

“Good luck, Lina,” Pamela said. “You'll need it.”

As Ivy left, Harley plucked the top off of her plastic cup and downed the rest of her drink like someone hoping to find absolution at the bottom of a bottle. Instead, all she found was pain as the ice in the drink numbed her nerves.

“Eeee,” she groaned, touching a hand to her forehead. Calming down from her brain freeze, she leaned over Crane and kissed him on the forehead. “Get better, Professor.”

He rubbed at his forehead with his good hand, disgusted by the warmth in the act and also worried she left red printed on him like a stamp of approval.

Harley left and all that remained was Selina Kyle, Crane and the bed.

Folding her arms, Selina sighed and glanced down at the floor at her feet.

“Do you need anything?” She asked.

“Enough morphine to put me out of my misery would be pleasant,” he replied.

“Wish I had that,” she returned. “I need to shower and change. Don't get anymore blood on my sheets, okay? They're fucking nice and I can't remember where I bought them.”

“Oh, the trials and tribulations of the modern consumer,” Crane muttered under his breath, watching as she wandered towards a nearby room.

A bathroom? Crane figured, a thought hitting him at the same moment.

“What do I do--” he stopped short as Selina unzipped her tight leather costume, the top falling down to reveal naked shoulders and a black sports bra.

“Count the ceiling tiles, Jon.” She called back, peeling the bra off and flinging to in the direction of a laundry hamper as she disappeared into the bathroom.

That was wholly unnecessary, he figured. A nice place like hers would have at least two bathrooms.

There weren't even any ceiling tiles to count and he couldn't sleep, the pain was causing his entire body to tense and jump and twitch and he was wide awake, feeling like hell and left naked in a siren's bed.

A black cat leapt up onto the bed at his side and sniffed at him eagerly.

Crane eyed it warily. Well, at least petting the stupid creature would pass time, he figured, shifting carefully so his left hand could stroke the cat about the head.

“Don't think this makes us comrades,” he declared bitterly.

She was a beautiful cat though. Large and sleek, with golden eyes that peered at him with an old soul wisdom that haunted Crane to his very core.

Seeming to find him appropriate company, the cat settled against him, rumbling away, her tail flicking as she watched with guarded eyes every flicker of shadow and shade. She looked like she had decided to become his guardian and Crane found himself smiling ever so.

Brave little feline, he would give her that.

“A little warmer welcome than your lady gave me,” he said to the cat.

The cat looked at him like she knew something he didn't and he found it oddly smug.

Crane didn't care for that look. It was too knowing.

“Was she the one who undressed me?” He asked the cat, getting a little insulted to have been plucked so carelessly by such a cold woman. “You seem like you've seen a little too much of me.”

The cat looked away, still smug.

“Don't care for that at all,” Crane went on.

God, his head hurt, it hurt more than even his body, it seemed. Like a migraine settling in. One of those bad ones he got at times, where he didn't feel better until he threw up, where scents and strong smells bothered him, aggravated the migraine.

He wasn't kidding when he had wished himself dead. He felt like shit. He felt like one of those ancient sticks people used to wipe their asses with before toilet paper.

He felt like death would be a blessing.

Hearing the shower turn off, Crane set his face back into a blank slate as Selina emerged from her bathroom, towel on her head and one covering her body.

It was easy to see why she was the coveted femme fatale of the underworld, her long, pale legs strutting confidently across her bedroom floor, her smooth, toned arms holding her towels in place. Even in something as bland as a black towel, her body was made for the lustful gaze of those who found curves to be their attraction.

She had so many curves, she could have donated a few to the scarecrows of the world and still be a breathtaking beauty.

She had the kind of curves that looked best in a skin tight dress, seen from behind, from in front, from the side, in a soft bed, above a willing partner, astride him like a Valkryie riding into battle.

Crane didn't notice any of that, however. He had no time for her sort, she was an asp in a wicker basket meant for another man but him.

“Why am I in your bed?” He demanded. “Surely you have another bedroom in this place? Selina Kyle doesn't settle for less than luxury.”

She removed the towel from her hair and tousled her hair dry, eyes on the cat beside him on the bed. “My other bedrooms are none of your business, be glad you're in this one and not back in that alley.”

“I believe I mentioned rather wishing to be dead instead,” he said, left hand raising up to rub vigorously at the area between his eyebrows where the migraine always settled.

“Want me to help with that?” She demanded.

“What? My migraine?” He snapped a little rougher than he intended.

“No, your demise,” the grin was heard in her voice.

“I always wanted to be asphyxiated.” He glanced up at her as he continued to rub his forehead.

She offered him a wicked grin over her bare shoulder. “Sounds like you'd enjoy that too much.”

Crane blinked. He didn't mean it like that at all. He honestly always believed death by hanging to be an interesting way to die. Just swaying in the breeze, properly ended. He decided not to say anything further to the woman, she turned everything into an innuendo and he didn't care for an intellectual conversation on death to be morphed into something base.

Of course, there was a small part of him that was delighted by the vision of her on top of some poor yuppie, her hand at his throat.

God help him, she would make a glorious angel of death, her dark hair wild and unruly, falling around her Gene Tierney features, her lovely Elizabeth Taylor eyes flashing death and danger and lust.

It was almost enough to put fear into the master of fear himself.

Almost.

Sniffing to clear his thoughts, Crane sighed and dropped his hand, settling it now on his stomach. Now was not the time for frivolous fantasies of frisky felines. He was still at her mercy, whether he liked it or not, so playing nice and leaving his libido at the door was top priority.

“Here,” she said, moving back into her bathroom and returning with a pill bottle. “Some pain meds from my personal stash.”

“Thank you,” he muttered as she offered him two in her delicately strong hand.

For a moment, standing over him, watching him as he took a gulp of water from Harley's icy drink straw, her cool demeanour seemed to waver and she offered him what he could assume was a soft look. It warmed her features wonderfully and Crane actually resented it. She was supposed to be an untouchable Goddess, not some flesh and blood woman.

“All joking aside, you're lucky to be alive.” She said.

“Give it time,” he returned. “My spleen could be ruptured and I may die of internal bleeding yet.”

Selina's eyes went from his face to his chest and back again, before she turned from him with her cold mask set in place. “Hecate will let me know if something's up.” She said. “In the meantime, get some rest.”

He didn't want to ask it, but he knew it would be an inevitability. “What happens when I need to micturate?”

“What?”

“Use the toilet?” He clarified.

Selina turned around from where she was slipping on a pair of black panties under her towel. “Don't?” She suggested.

“Yes, I'll hold it for...two months, that's how long broken bones need to mend.”

Sighing, she demanded, “do you have to go now?”

“No, but all this water is making me think in about four or five hours you may need professional clean up for this bed if we don't have a proper exit strategy, if you will?”

“Shit...I'll...go to the medical store and get you some crutches,” she suggested.

He motioned to his right arm.

“Fuck,” she groaned. “I'll get you a wheelchair then.”

Again he motioned to his right arm. “Unless you want me rolling around in a circle?”

“I am not cleaning a bedpan.”

“Didn't think this through, did you?” He asked.

“Dr. Thorne,” she suggested suddenly. “He could set you up with a walking cast? Maybe? Or a cane?”

“If the break is all right. Everything is all right,” Crane said, his speech slurring a little. He was slipping into the effects of the pills. Everything was floating. “You'd better figure something out fast...your bed is so soft...it smells like a meadow.”

“Oh, Jon, that's the pills kicking in.”

Resting back in a more relaxed pose on her bed, he studied her as she went about changing before him, not at all concerned about his gaze. She did it in a graceful way, never showing him anything shocking, just pulling a tank top on over her towel, before setting the towel aside.

“Are you cold?” She asked him.

“Job 37:10,” he murmured, lulling himself into a warm lake of comfort, watching as Selina Kyle moved about her bedroom as though he wasn't there. Her voice acknowledging him, while her body ignored him.

He felt like the proverbial fly on the wall.

“Your voice is beautiful,” he mumbled. “Sing to me.”

“Definitely the pills talking,” she chuckled.

“She cut his head off,” he mumbled, falling down, down into the warm water that surrounded him.

“Who, Jon?” Selina asked, moving towards him in the dim light of her bedroom, a blanket in hand.

For a moment Crane was silent, staring at her as she approached.

“Judith,” he whispered, barely making a sound.

His eyes closed and he drifted off.

 


	2. Norwegian Wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selina gets Dr. Thorne, the Crime Doctor, to take a look at Jon and regret begins to seep in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've all been so cool about this, that I thought I'd update a little faster than planned for you. Thanks for the reviews, kids!

##  Chapter Two: Norwegian Wood

**Selina**

She wasn't entirely sure what to do, to be honest.

Harley had a point in the alley. You didn't rat other criminals out to the cops, not if you wanted to have a good year. So turning Crane over to the hospital who would most certainly turn him over to the GCDOC, didn't sound like a wise decision.

Especially since Jonathan Crane's form of prison shank was a very unpleasant trip on some fear toxin.

Still, she didn't want to have the man himself laid up in her bed in her bedroom, his almost ridiculously long and lanky frame stretched out across her good sheets.

God, undressing him hadn't been her idea of a good time. He growled and snarled in pain every time they moved him, making it sound like Selina was wrangling a wild, half skinned animal in her apartment.

Harley said something about it taking two months for a broken bone to heal and she was in denial over it, until Crane brought it up himself.

She wasn't planning on having him there that long. Long enough for him to hobble back to whatever hole he had made his home was just fine for her.

But then he woke up and was making some sense and those unreadable eyes of his were on her and Selina realized sharing her personal space with the Scarecrow was something she was not prepared for.

And then he went and asked her about the bathroom situation and she realized she was saddled with a six foot plus, giant man-baby.

After settling the blanket over him, she sat on the edge of the bed and studied him as he slept, deep in thought.

It occurred to her that she had never seen Crane when he wasn't brooding in a dark corner of the Iceberg or dressed in his costume lobbing fear toxin grenades and swinging his scythe.

In sleep he was easier to study, less likely to turn those eerily blank eyes on her and pin her down like a butterfly on a specimen board.

She didn't like that look he wore in his eyes. They had hardly ever interacted, but every interaction had her chilled to her core.

That was his entire purpose, she supposed.

But here, watching him as he slept, she realized he was only human. A flesh and blood man, brought down hard to the ground and in need of a little compassion.

Selina had very little to give in the first place, but she supposed she could afford to spend it. The New Year was coming and that would reset her compassion meter.

“You're lucky I have a thing for dirty alley strays,” she muttered to Crane's sleeping form. “But I am not changing a bedpan.”

Deciding on that, she pushed up from the bed, Hecate jumping down to join her.

She would call the Iceberg, Dr. Thorne was almost always there, day or night, getting blissfully tanked in a back booth surrounded by one or two or sometimes three women and every now and then a handsome young man. Sometimes, he would be there alone reading the racing forms in the paper or deep in the bowels of some medical magazine.

If anyone could figure something out, it would be the Crime Doctor.

Grabbing her cellphone off the charger, she checked the time to ensure the Iceberg would be open, then scrolled through her contacts, finding the number for the lounge.

“Iceberg? Whadaya want?” The bartender picked up.

“Dr. Thorne.” She replied coolly.

“Hang on.”

Selina eased down on her sofa, Circe joining her, the fluffy white cat flopping against her thigh as Selina scratched the cat's ears and head.

“Yes?” Someone greeted on the other end.

“Dr. Thorne, I need you,” Selina purred into the phone.

There was a pause.

“Who is this?”

Selina smirked gently at the man's tone. “Catwoman.”

“What is it you have and where can I find you?”

“A broken and battered Scarecrow and I'm at Wildwood Apartments, room 810.”

“Penthouse?”

“Yes.”

“Nice, how much do you pay a month?”

“I never discuss money,” she replied with a grin.

“Beauty and class,” Dr. Thorne sighed. “I'll be there in...thirty.”

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

Doctor Matthew Thorne was a short, lithe man, well groomed and handsome in a sort of elfin way. If anyone could play Puck, it would be Dr. Thorne.

He didn't possess the chaotic energy his cocaine addled brother had, but he did have a bit of insanity in his eyes if you looked long enough.

Grinning, the medical 'professional' entered her penthouse, bag in hand, followed by a woman who looked less like a nurse and more like a porn star's idea of a nurse.

Whistling low, the man took in her view, pressing his hands and face to the glass of her living room window to peer down at the rest of Gotham.

“Wowee, this is nice.” He turned around to face her. “Well done.”

“The patient's in here,” Selina said, leading him towards the master bedroom.

Entering her room, she found Crane still out cold, he would be for hours, she hoped.

“My God,” Thorne exclaimed. “What a hell of a mess.”

Selina nodded. Crane looked worse than he was, she supposed.

“No maid, hmm?”

Glancing at the piles of clean clothes she had strewn about her room from one of her many tears through her closet, Selina huffed. “ _Crane_ fell from the rooftop of a three story building.”

“Hm, well I'll check his internal organs and get him better adjusted, shall I?” Dr. Thorne said with a grin. “You go and put on a movie or something, Ms. Kyle. Patricia and I have this under control.”

Selina took one last look at Crane, before complying, ducking out of her own bedroom to mill about in her kitchen.

She did have a maid that came in once a week, but with nothing better to do, she straightened up her own place out of lack of anything else to do.

God it made her feel like some old house wife, puttering around her kitchen, scrubbing her counters, while she waited for news on the man occupying her bed.

Why did she let herself get talked into this? It was becoming an ordeal now.

After two hours of mind numbing busywork, Dr. Thorne emerged, his 'nurse' close behind.

“Well, I set the leg, cast it and reset his shoulder as well, tucked that in a sling, he has a mild concussion, shocked he hasn't suffered worse brain damage to be honest, I bandaged his ribs and his internal organs seem in order. I stress the word 'seem' as I still want you to keep a close eye on him. If he goes into shock, call me immediately. That means, if he babbles nonsensically, stares at the middle distance or generally acts off, let me know.”

Selina scoffed. “That sounds like Crane on his best days.”

“Tomorrow morning pick him up a crutch he can use until his leg heals better, then switch to a cane if he wants, he can use those to get to the bathroom on his own, but don't let him go much further, not with his ribs as bad as they are.” Dr. Thorne pulled a pill bottle from his bag and handed it to her. “Give him one of these for the pain, only one and only when he needs it. These fuckers are a hundred bucks a pill, so take it easy and...they are addictive, so...little does wonders.”

Selina nodded. “How long before I can shove him back out on his own?”

Laughing, Thorne said, “two months.”

“Are you fucking me right now?” Selina demanded. She didn't mean to sound so crass, but holy hell that was too long to be saddled with Crane.

“Look, I know enough about Crane to know he won't take it easy on his own. If he rebreaks that leg it'll never set right and will cause some damage. It's best if he can rest here with a friend.”

“Ha!” She snorted. “Right. A friend. Okay. Well, thank you, Doctor.”

Dr. Thorne held out his hand with a grin. “For the pills and the time spent.”

Huffing again, she fetched her purse, digging out her wallet.

“For you, I'll say a thousand even.”

“I'd hate to pay your regular price,” she muttered. “I don't have a thousand on me. I don't carry that much.”

“Selina,” Thorne purred.

Again she sighed deeply. “Fine. Wait here.”

Wandering into her spare bedroom, where her entire collection of cat trees and cat beds and cat toys resided, she went to the closet and with a cautious look to ensure slimey Matthew Thorne wasn't anywhere nearby, she pulled up the floor and opened her safe.

Counting out eleven hundred, she closed and secured the door, before leaving the room.

“Here's eleven hundred, for the speedy service.”

Dr. Thorne grinned. “For that extra hundred, how about some advice?”

“Oh?” She sort of grunted, not wanting to commit to agreeing to any unsolicited advice.

“Jonathan Crane is a sadist, but he's not without empathy. He isn't a sociopath. Give him a fair shake and I'm sure you two will get through the next two months without killing each other.”

“Is that your official diagnosis, Doctor?” She inquired, walking him to the door. "Sadist?"

“It is, actually. You think I don't watch you all come and go in the lounge? I am the eyes and ears of this institution.”

Selina tilted her head. She didn't know which institution he was speaking of.

“The Breakfast Club?” Dr. Thorne asked. “Ah, never mind. Look, you'll be fine. You're a tough woman. Just give him a spanking when he gets bad, hmm? He might like it.”

“Out,” she commanded, opening the door. “Thank you.”

“Goodnight.” Patricia the 'nurse' said on her way out the door.

Closing the door, she sighed deeply.

“Fuck,” she murmured.

 

* * *

 

Selina Kyle was not a television person, but with no other options but babysitting, she found herself in on a Thursday night, watching some program about space.

Outside the sky had darkened early, denoting the approach of winter, the skyline of Gotham lit up with buildings full of other people doing things and being places.

And there she was, in her tank top and shorts, munching on popcorn, her hair pulled up into a loose bun, her cats surrounding her.

A thump and a swear caught her attention and she looked up from the television to find Crane bumping his way down her hall, his costume pants pulled on, the leg with the cast tore open in order for the cast to fit through, the rest of his gear tied about his waist, heading towards the door.

Selina watched his struggle for about two minutes as he clumsily used the wall to hobble his way out, snacking on popcorn the entire time.

As he nearly toppled upon reaching the open area where the hall spilled out into the intersection of her living room and the front hall, she finally put her bowl down.

“Hey, Crane,” she called out. “If you're leaving, you owe me eleven hundred bucks for the repair job.”

“That's on you,” he grunted, still making his way pathetically to the door. “I told you to let me die.”

She watched his lanky frame as he paused to rest, leaning heavily on the wall with his good arm, his unreadable eyes on her from under lowered brows.

Reaching for his pain pills on the coffee table before her, she held them up and shook them like she did the cat treat bag for her cats.

“Painkillers,” she said. “Come on. Come sit with me.”

He panted for a moment, before bowing his head. “I...can't.”

“Physically or because you don't like to make personal connections with other human beings?”

He scowled darkly. “Physically.”

“And you thought you could make a getaway like this?” She teased, setting his pills down on the table, knowing that if she went over there with them, he would just knock her down and take them before making another feeble attempt at escape.

Wrapping one arm around his waist and setting her hand on his chest to steady him, she said, “come on, I'll help you get there.”

“Everything hurts,” he growled. “Easy.”

“Okay, well you're the idiot who left the bed and the couch is closer for now.” She pointed out, helping him make his way to the couch.

God he was heavier than he looked. In his Scarecrow costume he looked like just that, nothing but skin and bone, but putting most of his weight on her, shirtless and exhausted, she could feel the strain of his muscles, could see the toned ripples flexing and releasing as he used them to his best ability.

Easing him clumsily down onto the couch, she ensured his leg was raised on the coffee table, before reaching for his pill bottle and opening it.

“I'll get you some water,” she said.

“Don't bother,” he mumbled, taking the pill and downing it dryly.

“Jesus, you're hardcore.” She pointed out, sitting down beside him. Some things just weren't done, and swallowing pills dry was just...nasty.

Crane winced and settled his good hand over his bandaged ribs, heading lolling on the soft couch back, eyes opened lazily, watching the television.

Selina tucked her legs up, almost nervous to be sitting beside Crane in her home in her home clothes.

He was just a man, but hell it was awkward.

Resting her chin on her knees, she pretended to watch the show, body tense, very much aware of Crane sitting beside her.

She knew what it was.

Outside her home she was Catwoman or Selina Kyle, always immaculate, always in control. She was the proverbial man-eater, not at anyone's mercy.

Here at home, she was Lina. A woman with three cats (at least three that she called her own), who didn't like her long hair in her face so she pulled it up and out of the way, a woman who wore comfortable clothes before bed or when she was just lounging around her house. Then again, she was hardly ever home.

Maybe this was why she was hardly ever home. She didn't like who she was when she wasn't out being Catwoman.

Any man who stayed over were still seeing the woman she wanted them to see, the woman who wore sheer babydoll nightgowns and all her jewellery to bed. She never showed them the real woman underneath, because showing them the real her was giving up a piece of her control and she didn't ever do that.

An intruder, especially one like Jonathan Crane, threw her off her guard, made her feel on edge. She wasn't prepared for him and to be honest, she wasn't about to parade around in anything remotely sexy with his unreadable hazel eyes following her every move like some large housecat.

And good God he was staring at her now.

“What?” She demanded, not daring to take her eyes off the television. The space show ended and now it was a show about the ancient Inca's.

“You're shorter without your heels and boots,” he murmured. "What are you? Five-five? Five-six? Small."

“Shut up,” she replied. “Watch the show.”

He didn't, instead asking her, “is it finally sinking in that I will be here a while?"

“Yes."

“Are you planning to hold me hostage here for two months?”

“I'm not holding you hostage, but I'm not letting you leave in this state.”

Crane was quiet for a moment. “Let's talk seriously for a moment.”

“About what?”

“If I'm to be stuck here for a while, however long. I promise I won't speak a word of this experience to anyone, if you do me the same courtesy.”

“Deal,” she said quickly, wanting very much for this entire fiasco to remain between the two of them.

“Good,” he grunted, re-positioning himself gingerly. “Now unclench.”

She frowned at the television, before forcing herself to release the tension in her body, sighing as she did so, changing the channel to a fashion show, watching the women in their high end, artistic but utterly useless clothes as they paraded down the catwalk.

It was mostly blacks that were on display, gothic in style and dramatic.

“She walks these hills in a long black veil,” Crane sang tauntingly, his rasping, gravelly voice not at all attractive to the ears.

Selina struggled to ignore him.

“She visits my grave when the night winds wail,” he went on a little louder.

“Stop it.” She cautioned him.

“Nobody knows. Nobody sees. Nobody knows, but me.” He wailed like a cat at the door.

“What?” She demanded, turning to him. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I'm enjoying the funeral,” he replied calmly.

Huffing, she picked up the remote. “What do you want to watch then?”

“I don't watch television.”

She contemplated murder for a moment, before saying as calmly as she could, “then shut up about what I watch.”

They turned back to the fashion show.

“The judge said 'son, what is your alibi? If you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die',” he continued to sing.

Turning the television off, she turned to him. “Okay, what is it?”

“Why are you so hung up on fashion, Selina?” He returned calmly.

“Oh you are not going to come into my house, into my personal space and psycho-analyze me with your garbage degree,” she warned him.

“Psychology is hardly a garbage degree. And I wasn't attempting such a hamfisted act, I was merely curious as to why you think what you wear and how you appear to others is so important.”

“What do you mean?” She demanded. “And make it clear or I will show you my claws.”

“Ah,” he breathed. “Now you're speaking my language. What I meant, Selina, is that we are born naked. If the bible is to be believed, we had no shame in the beginning, but why then are we born naked if we are to feel shame? You enjoy putting on costumes and slathering your face with beetle carcasses and fish scales, to what end?”

She stared at him for a moment, before shifting on the couch to face him fully.

“It makes me feel good, Jon.” She replied calmly, turning her voice into a dark purr. “Don't you like to feel good.”

Seduction was her go-to whenever she felt uncomfortable, she didn't know why, didn't want to open that Pandora's box.

He gazed back at her with glassy eyes, still unreadable, always goddamned unreadable.

She had always thought his eyes were hazel or brown, but staring at them in the cold lights of her penthouse, she realized that they were neither. They were, well she supposed they were green, but they were teal blue with bursts of olive around the pupils, the colours blending from a distance, making his eyes look all manners of odd colours.

If she looked hard, as she was now, she could almost count a galaxy of freckles dusting his sharp, angular cheekbones, running over the bridge of his nose.

Jonathan Crane had always been spooky to her, which made her believe him unattractive, but he wasn't really.

Gazing at him now, she found he wasn't at all unattractive. He was unconventional, sure, but he was good looking enough. And she could tell he made an effort to look presentable when he wasn't wearing burlap or stuffing straw into his pant legs. His hair was well trimmed, his jaw clean shaven and aside from the dirt and grime from his wild Halloween night, he looked clean underneath.

Only, his blank features, schooled in a unimpressed, almost dour look, made her uneasy. They weren't entirely horrible to look at, just off-putting.

And he was thin, sure, he was the Scarecrow, after all. But he wasn't as twiggy as his costume made him seem. He was wiry, lean, toned.

Still beside her with no shirt on, he looked good, like any other flesh and blood man.

His godawful caterwauling continued, interrupting her thoughts.

“I spoke not a word, though it meant my life, for I'd been in the arms of my best friend's wife.”

“Are you hungry?” She asked, shaking her head at her own foolish thoughts. She had made many, many poor choices in men over the years, but Jonathan Crane was blacklisted.

Absolutely off the table.

Hell, he wasn't even on the floor under the table.

“No.” He replied.

“Is that how you got so scrawny?” She inquired. "Passing up meals?"

His eyes hardened and they narrowed, turning on her harshly.

Feeling like she hit a nerve she didn't know he possessed, she amended herself. “You should eat something.”

“My migraine is making my stomach queasy,” he returned, his voice harder than before, if that were even possible.

 


	3. The Long Black Veil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crane gets a babysitter and he's not happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thank Ditts for the comment! I'm glad you're enjoying the story! Sorry this chapter was a long time coming!

##  Chapter Three: The Long Black Veil

**Crane**

“What do you do for fun, Jon?”

He had fallen asleep on her couch, long limbed legs on the coffee table, arms tucked against his stomach, one because it was in a sling, the other to keep warm.

Crane had only just woken to the sound of someone moving about.

It was another day and his medications were wearing off. But he felt a little better, his leg still throbbed, along with his ribs, but his arm was okay so far.

“What?”

Selina Kyle, beautiful in anything she wore, wandered into the room in a tight black dress and strappy black heels. She may have been short, but with her feet in those heels with the hem of the dress riding up her thighs, well she seemed like she was all leg.

For a moment all the air in Crane's lungs was sucked out and his heart picked up its pace in his chest.

None of this registered on his face, however.

“I'm heading out, do you want anything to keep yourself busy? What do you like to do in your downtime?” She asked, sticking her cell phone into her little purse.

“Downtime?” He inquired.

“A book then?” She urged.

He nodded. It would be better than staring at her ceiling.

“Okay, what do you like to read?”

Crane wasn't sure. He found himself unwilling to tell her about the things he liked to read. He found this inability to answer her honestly irritating. Was he a man or a mouse?

“I'll pick out a selection, how about? I mean you are going to be here a while.”

He nodded.

“Are you okay? Do you need one of your pills?”

“No,” he said. “I enjoy the clarity. The pain is inconsequential right now.”

Selina nodded. “Well, I'll bring you a glass of water and I won't be gone long. I'm just getting a few things.”

“Things?” He repeated. “You look like you're going on a date.”

“No, I just...well, I'm hardly ever home and so...I thought I'd get some groceries.”

Crane almost laughed at that, taking her appearance in once more. God, he could smell the soft scent of her perfume from where he sat and it felt like a lure. “Groceries?”

“Look, jackass, I don't often entertain in this way, so I thought since we might be stuck here some nights, food would be important.” She muttered, ducking into the kitchen to fetch his water.

“Will you be cooking for me as well? Maybe making me some soup?” He inquired, eyeing the three cats who had all fallen asleep on the couch beside him.

She scoffed, returning with his water, setting it down within reach on a nearby end table. “Don't push your luck, Crane, okay?”

Heading for the door, Selina paused when he called after her.

“Could you...I will pay you, if you could get me some tea?” He asked.

“With what money?" She scoffed, before her eyes softened a little and she asked, "what do you like?”

“Earl Grey, thank you.”

“Do you take anything with it?”

“Lemon and honey, sometimes.”

He hated revealing this much personal information to anyone, it grated at him like salt water chaffing flesh.

Selina nodded. “Okay, some tea and a few books. Anything else? Are you allergic to anything?”

“Normalcy,” he mumbled almost angrily.

Laughing, the woman turned back to the door. “What's normal anyways, Jon?” She called out before she left.

Sitting for a long time in absolute silence, good hand petting the fluffy white cat, Jon stewed in a pool of his own irritability.

He supposed being forced into such close quarters with Selina, he was bound to reveal certain things about himself. But he didn't like it.

If he could be as the wind, he would be happy. Never staying anywhere long, never making any real connections, just moving past people and places, always moving.

After a few minutes of petting the cat, Crane grew restless. He studied his options for getting up, wondering if the pain would be worth a little snoop around.

Figuring he would just fall and put himself into another embarrassing situation with Selina, he remained still.

Beside him one of the cats stood up and stretched leisurely as though rubbing it in that she could move and he was stuck in place.

He didn't care for that.

“Show off,” he growled.

Thudding to the floor the white cat wandered off into the kitchen where the sounds of snacking were soon heard, the harsh 'crack crunch' of her meal an even further insult to his empty stomach.

In order to distract from his empty guts, he looked about him at Selina's penthouse.

It was done in a sort of rustic industrial style, raw walls of red brick and grey concrete, but there was a warmth there as well, in small touches of wood and a thick white sheepskin rug at his feet.

He didn't have an artistic bone in his body, but he had to admit he found it comfortable and classy. It was clearly a lived in home, with touches of her magazines here and there, a pair of shoes which seemed to have been forgotten under a nearby worn, brown leather chair which he could see in his slumped down state on the couch.

And there were other things denoting the fact that Selina Kyle was a flesh and blood human being. A few photos of her and Pamela and Harley on the fireplace mantle, scented candles which had been burnt at some point and something which intrigued him more than anything else. On the chair, under which the shoes were lost, sat a well worn, nearly threadbare, stuffed cat toy.

For a moment Crane tensed, his mind searching all the information it held on Catwoman, trying to recall whether she had a child or not.

His eyes drifted back to the personal photos on the mantle.

There was no child.

He deduced that the stuffed kitty cat must be her own.

It was an interesting piece of information he filed away to take to the grave with him. After all, he wasn't a complete monster, he planned on honouring their truce.

Hopefully she would do the same.

 

* * *

 

“I don't really know how to cook very much, so I got a hell of a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and frozen meals.”

Crane woke from his nap with an inelegant snort and hurriedly wiped the drool from his chin as Selina Kyle could be heard thumping and clacking in her kitchen.

“I figure if we get desperate there's always delivery,” she announced, stepping into the living room and handing him a little paper bag. “Breakfast sandwich from the bakery on the corner. Hopefully your stomach can handle something now.”

“Well, it's either this or starve,” he replied in a tone rather light for him.

She actually offered him a small, almost barely there smile and turned back to the kitchen.

“I had to get my doorman Andre to help me with my groceries,” she explained. “Never bought so many before.”

“I feel almost honoured,” he said, nibbling at the sandwich. Finding it rather to his liking, he indulged in it with more gusto, mindful of her leather couch beneath him and her pretty sheepskin rug at his foot, allowing the bag to catch most of the crumbs.

She peered around the corner and must have noticed him hunched over the bag like an animal, because soon she emerged with a small plate, handing it to him.

“How are you feeling?”

Irritated at having been caught in such an undignified manner, Crane carefully brushed crumbs into the bag before trading it to her for the plate, setting his sandwich on it and balancing it on his good knee.

“Hungry looks like,” she went on when he didn't answer her.

Crane finished his sandwich as she continued puttering around in the kitchen, eyes on the cats who had gathered around him.

“Seems Batman's on the lookout for you,” she shouted from the kitchen. “Apparently you gassed the mayor and his wife?”

“That's a shame, because I was aiming for the Comptroller of Public Accounts, Mayor Daniels was just collateral caught in the cross-stream.” He remarked.

From his spot on the couch, Crane could have sworn he heard Selina laugh softly to herself.

It wasn't unpleasant to hear. Her laugh was breathy and deep, more of an exhaling of air than a girlish giggle. He didn't think he could handle a girlish giggle, not from her.

“I'm sure that pompous ass Daniels would love to hear that he's mere collateral,” she said.

“I'll send him a little package when I'm all patched up to make sure he's clear on the incident.” He snarled.

Selina peered around the corner of the dividing wall at him, smiling softly. “Well, don't worry, Batman doesn't know where you are. He thought you escaped in the panic caused by Joker's bomb at the bank, he didn't know you fell.”

“Some saviour he is,” Crane grumbled. “I could have died.”

This earned him an outright laugh, it was still breathy, but a little more musical, her head falling back, long black hair swinging as she ducked back behind the wall.

Crane smiled only a little, turning to face the cat on his right as he did.

Returning with another sandwich she had clearly made herself, she set it on his plate and eased down beside him with a plate of her own. “Does that mean you think I'm your saviour for dragging your ass back here? You know Harley didn't help because of that damned drink and Pamela wouldn't.”

“I'm never going to show you any gratitude over that,” he remarked, taking a bite of the ham and Swiss she had made him and chewing on it thoughtfully, eyes on her. “Not after you had the gall of seeing me in my entirety.”

“You mean that I saw your dick?” She asked, nibbling on her own sandwich.

“You're bolder in a dress and heels,” he changed the subject smoothly.

“And you're still half naked,” she pointed out.

“If you can find a way to put a shirt on with a dislocated arm, I'm all for suggestions.”

“Shut up and eat your sandwich,” she ordered with a twinkle in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

“Who is Glenn Miller?”

Crane woke from his pill induced nap with a start.

Groggy, he looked about, confused for a moment as to where he was and how long he had been napping.

Beside him on the couch sat Edward Nygma, snacking on popcorn and watching some game show.

“What are you doing here?” Crane demanded gruffly, his voice even raspier from sleep. “Am I dreaming?”

Edward paused, popcorn halfway to his mouth. “Sure you are, Jon. Give it a bit and I'll turn into a bat.”

“Ed,” Selina cautioned, stepping into the room.

She looked like a royal glamour puss in a low cut, high riding purple dress.

“Crane, I'm heading out, Eddie said he'd watch you for me.”

Enraged that he was issued a babysitter like some brat, Crane inhaled and prepared to let everyone within a twenty mile radius know how he felt about that, when the Riddler cut his tirade off before it began.

“What is barium?” Edward shouted at the television.

“This is my nightmare,” Crane growled.

“Come on, Jon, it'll be fun. I brought Independence Day to watch.” The Riddler said with a grin.

Ignoring the man at his side, Crane was too focused on watching as Selina slipped on her shoes, his face pulled into a dark scowl. “Trying to fill that emptiness in your life with romance, Selina?” He snarled. “That hole will never be filled.”

“Well, not on the first date, Jon,” she replied coolly. “Be good for Eddie, okay?”

He shot the door a withering look as Selina disappeared through it.

“Who was George Washington Carver?” Edward barked from his side.

Sitting up with some difficulty, Crane winced as his shoulder and leg pulled funny, the muscles protesting the sharp movements he was suddenly attempting as he tried to get to his feet.

“Easy,” Edward cautioned him, not taking his eyes of the screen.

“I'll be fine.”

“Alright, let's see what you got,” the other man said, turning to face him finally. It sounded like a challenge.

Gritting his teeth, Crane reached for the crutch Selina had given him. He had to use it under his good arm and God was it a journey just to get to his feet.

Growling, he finally managed to stand, huffing from the effort.

“Where are you heading, anyways?” Edward asked.

“To throw myself off the balcony,” Crane retorted dryly.

“Godspeed, drama queen.”

“Die, Rusty,” Crane grumbled, hopping and hobbling his way towards the hall.

“Balcony's the other way.” Edward said, not taking his eyes off the television.

Each jarring thump as he hopped sent pain all through him, his ribs, his limbs, even his head. But his bladder was reaching critical mass and he wasn't about to embarrass himself further.

Peering into each room as he passed, he tried to remember which one was her main bathroom from his journey into the living area, but it was a blur. Finally he found it and hopped inside, closing the door behind him with great difficulty.

A cat peered up at him from where it slept in the sink, looking like he was a great disturbance to her.

“You really want to be here for this?” He asked her.

The calico blinked at him, watching the stranger warily as he headed slowly for the toilet.

“Never performed for a cat before,” he remarked, setting his crutch against the counter so he could lift the toilet lid with his good arm. Glancing over at the cat he hesitated, before lifting the seat too. “Do you always judge men who come to piss in this bathroom or is it just me?”

The cat continued to watch him with her golden eyes.

A little unnerved, Crane set his hand against the wall behind the toilet and hopped so his back was kind of to the cat, cutting off her judgmental gaze, before he pulled himself out with a little fumbling and began his task.

When he finished, he gave the cat one last look as the toilet was flushing, before sighing and returning the seat and lid to their resting positions.

“Happy?” He demanded of the feline.

She blinked and looked away.

“I'm going to need that sink,” he said, using the counter to hop over to her.

The cat's ears flattened against her head. She heard him, but she was still ignoring him.

“Look, you can move on your own or I can move you, and I'm not very nice.” He reached for the cat to scoot her out of the sink, but she wasn't having it and bit him right in the soft flesh of his thumb.

Jerking his hand back, he scowled. “I'm not going to fight with a cat. Move!”

The cat began to flick her tail, eyeing him now with malicious intent.

He knew better than to try to get his hand in close, but he needed to wash it.

If he could make it past the cat to the soap, he could use the bathtub, he supposed.

Slowly he reached out for the soap above the cat's head.

She watched him, hunching down, making herself small, but she made no move to stop him as he helped himself to soap, using his thumb on the plunger.

It was only then, as he cautiously turned from the sink to the tub, that he realized he couldn't turn the knob on with soap in his hand.

For a moment he contemplated just laying down and allowing himself to fall int the depths of the void. He had truly given up at that moment.

The cat must have sensed his mood shift from irritation to helplessness as she hopped down from the sink and headed for the closed door.

Turning the knob on with his soapy hand, he did his best to wash it, huddling over the sink as much as his ribs would allow, using the hand in the sling to lather the soap.

By the time he had dried his hands, there was knocking on the door.

“Did you hang yourself in there with Selina's blow dryer cord?” Edward demanded from the other side of the door.

“Give me time,” Crane growled softly under his breath.

More knocking.

Setting up his crutch for his exodus from the bathroom, Crane sighed.

“Do you need help?” Edward asked, the smile very clear in his tone.

Yanking open the door, Crane pushed past the man, hobbling towards the bedroom.

“I'm going to bed to sleep through the rest of this carnival of horrors,” he murmured over his shoulder.

“Okay,” Edward returned in a tone which was too mockingly sweet. “Sleep well, buddy.”

 

* * *

 

He must have shifted in his sleep, forgetting about his leg, as he woke with a searing pain, jolting up and jarring his ribs and shoulder.

“Shit,” he hissed, instantly reaching for his shoulder.

“Are you still here?” Selina demanded, wandering out of her bathroom in an oversized t-shirt and he believed panties. It was hard to tell as the shirt fell just below her ass.

“How was your date?” He snarled.

“Dry.”

“Interesting,” Crane taunted. “Disappointed to be coming home to me?”

“Oh, I was hoping Eddie would drive you to jump from the balcony.”

Crane watched as she sat on the edge of the bed beside him, moisturizing her arms. She had no idea how close she was to the truth.

“He nearly did,” he murmured, distracted by her. “What are you doing?”

“Moisturizing,” she replied.

“I mean, what's this?” He motioned to her on the bed.

“It's my fucking bed, Jon. I'm not sleeping on the couch.”

“Neither am I.”

“Then move over,” she growled.

“Don't you have three bedrooms in this place?”

“One is an office and the other isn't a bedroom,” she replied.

“What is it? Gym?”

“Yes.” She said simply.

Struggling to sit up, Crane said, “you're lying.”

“Am I?”

“It's a cat room, I saw the cat tree on my way past earlier.”

“Then why'd you ask?” She snapped, burrowing under the blankets.

“Did he talk about himself?” Crane asked as he also settled back down onto the bed.

“Who?”

“The date.”

Sighing, Selina rolled onto her back and threw her hand over her eyes. “Are you going to do this the entire two months you'll be here?”

“Do what?” He asked.

She rolled onto her elbow in order to peer down at him in the dark. “Push my buttons.”

“Am I pushing your buttons, Selina dear? I do so _profusely_ apologize.”

She blinked at him, before easing back down on the bed.

Crane turned his head to look down at her beside him, her dark hair spread out over her pillow, her face a graveyard of memories and thoughts, each locked in a vaulted crypt never to be dug up.

“What is your biggest fear, Selina? That this dry, dull, stupid man--”

“--didn't say he was stupid.”

“That this man will be your last chance for...what? Belonging? A family? The best sex you've ever had?” He inquired.

“Jon, just knowing you've been dwelling on my sex life has made my pussy drier than the Atacama,” she replied coolly.

“I'm sorry to hear you have sexual difficulties,” he returned evenly. “They make lubricants for that.”

Rolling over so she bridged her body over top of his, Selina pressed her knee up against his crotch and peered down at him with an animalistic fury. “One more word.” She warned him. “And I'll end your family line right here and now.”

“You should know I have no fear,” he said, before adding with a small, proud flash in his eyes. “But I'm not a fool. Lay back down and I'll behave.”

Selina glared down at him with hard, glittering violet eyes for the longest time, before giving his testicles a firm nudge with her knee, as though testing him.

It was merely a reflexive action when he winced.

Smirking, she rolled off him again and eased back down.

“I think tomorrow I'll have a shower,” he said after a moment of silence.

“I could care less.”

“You'll need to help me, of course,” he went on.

When she rolled her head to the side to peer at him in the darkness, he lifted his good hand and gestured to his bad arm.

“Unless, of course, you'd like to assist me in a sponge bath?” He went on.

“Neither sounds appealing to me,” she returned. “You can figure out the shower on your own.”

“Fine,” he said. “If I fall, however, it would be worse, I think. Having to help me up, arms wrapped around my slippery, naked form.”

“A sponge bath would work,” she stated firmly. “I can help you with the hard to reach places, but you washing your pathetic, withered dick is your own problem.”

Crane actually grinned, well a grin to him, which to Selina, in the near dark, seemed to be a mere quirk at the corners of his mouth. “We both know it's not withered, and you of all people should know it's not even close to pathetic.”

“You're right,” she conceded, rolling over so her back was to him. “It leans more towards unfortunate than pathetic.”

For a moment Crane was startled by the woman's words. It wasn't that it stung, but that she was so...precise in her destruction of his pride. He actually found himself admiring her as she fell asleep beside him in her bed.

Unable to sleep, even with the painkiller thrumming his nerves into a blissful, floating, pain-free state, Crane laid there in the dark for the longest time, eyes on the ceiling, listening to Selina Kyle as she breathed.

It had been, oh closer to a decade, since he had shared a bed with anyone. The feeling was foreign to him, as even when he dallied in youthful adventures, they were always fleeting and brief. He was too busy, always too busy for intimacy. There was a dark and misty world inside each man's skull, and he was more interested in that then physical closeness with a human being.

When he had joked with Selina that he was allergic to normalcy, he was half standing in a kiddie pool of truth, one foot dipping into the cold waters. He had never slept with anyone, woke up, made breakfast, read the newspaper, sat on a couch and watched television, held hands, did anything that resembled what society would consider normal.

He hunched over his breakfast, most days. A meal consisting of a granola bar or some form of simple energy packed treat, a mug of hot tea and his research.

Jonathan Crane didn't even sleep in a bed, usually.

Chairs were easier to drag into hideouts and empty warehouses. He slept sitting up or slumped over his workbench, he washed himself in sinks and by spigots, anywhere fresh water flowed worked for him.

Truthfully, as he lay there in the dark, his mind spinning and flowing about the room on the friendly high of the pills, he realized he was more animal than man.

Selina Kyle was the opposite of everything he was.

She was dignity and grace, clean lines and sleek curves.

She was the silk to his burlap.

With that thought, Crane knew he was high on the pills. He had to be. He wasn't poetic at all, but damned if the pills and the scent and sound of the woman beside him wasn't interfering in his usual thoughts of darkness and destruction, of fears and worries.

 


	4. We Didn't Start The Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crane gets a bath and a free strip show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Wizard_of_Ozzie, Le_Noir and DittyWrites for the comments! You guys are friggin' amazing and I appreciate the effort you made to let me know you're enjoying this fic!
> 
> Are we all having fun?! God, I hope so...

#  Chapter Four: We Didn't Start the Fire

**Selina**

Brushing her teeth the next morning, she kept one eye on her phone sitting on the countertop by the sink and the other on the lanky form sprawled out as best he could in her bed.

Jonathan Crane slept like the dead, in the sense that he hadn't moved in hours and he made no sound at all.

It creeped her out a little and she had to check that he was breathing before she left the bed.

Despite the fact he had unfolded after she left the bed, she was pleased to find he kept well to his side of the bed and to her credit only once during the night she had awoken to find her hand had found his chest in the dark, her fingers resting in the dark hairs there, nestled down.

It was a force of habit for her to curl up with the men who were lucky enough for her to deign them with permission to remain after their encounters, so she chalked her mistake up to that.

She only thanked God that Crane was a deep sleeper, as he didn't wake or notice when she removed her hand and tucked it back to her own side almost angrily at the betrayal it had shown her.

Now she nervously watched for signs that he was waking up while waiting for word from Harley on whether she was coming over later with Pam.

Spitting into the sink, she rinsed her mouth, swishing the cold water around, enjoying the crisp feeling it made when combined with the mint of her toothpaste.

Straightening up, she glanced in the mirror and nearly mule kicked the form standing behind her.

Crane, leaning heavily on his crutch, scowled at her.

“You're lucky I didn't kick you,” she said.

“Good morning to you too.” He returned.

Running a brush through her dark hair, she asked, “what are you doing out of bed?”

“I was promised a sponge bath and as much as I hate to rely on you for anything, I'm beginning to turn my own stomach with my smell.” He grumbled.

She pulled her hair up into a high ponytail and turned to him. “Now?”

He sneered like something bitter had jumped into his mouth suddenly. “Please?”

Realizing he must have been desperate enough to use manners, she nodded. “Fine. Sit on the toilet.”

“Dignified,” he murmured.

“Well, I'm not giving you a sponge bath in my bed,” she returned. “It's bad enough I have to help you with this.”

“Tell me about it.”

As she ducked under her bathroom sink for a new cleaning sponge she kept there, she noticed Crane staring at her quietly from where he had sat himself on the closed toilet.

“What?” She asked, brushing stray hairs from her eyes as she hunted for the sponge.

“I have no clean clothes to change into.”

“Well, all you'll be able to do is some pants and I think I have an old pair of pyjama bottoms you can wear.”

“Will they have cats on them?” He inquired dryly.

“They aren't mine,” she replied. “Think they're striped.”

“Do I want to know whose bottoms they are?” He demanded.

“Probably not,” she replied, rising to her feet with a sponge and plugging the bathroom sink to run some hot water for his bath.

“Better than my costume pants, I suppose,” he sighed, adjusting his position on the toilet.

Selina watched him as he winced and figured after the bath she'd get him a pill and send him back to bed. He looked like he was fighting a losing battle with his broken and battered body.

As much as she disliked the whole situation, she couldn't imagine what the man would have done had she not taken him in. Would he have dragged himself back to his hole in the wall? Would he have festered and suffered? More than likely he would have made an attempt to patch himself up, would have a permanent limp from his attempts, probably starve without means to go out and forage.

This was a testament to her bleeding heart. She liked to pretend she didn't care about anything or anyone beyond herself and her cats, but here she was putting up with a sullen house guest, about to give him a sponge bath of all things.

The absurdity of the situation did not escape her.

“Do you...what do you need me to wash?” She asked, approaching him with the sponge. “Where can't you reach?”

Reaching out a long fingered hand, he unfurled those digits and held his palm open for the sponge. “I'll wash what I can, you can...wait outside the door.”

Handing him over the sponge, Selina nodded. “Just call me when you need me.”

Thankful for his initiative, she almost fled out of the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Her nervousness stemmed from Crane's reclusive nature, she was certain of that. Had he been some dashing, handsome lawyer or hedge fund, she wouldn't have hesitated in putting on her best lacy underwear and played nurse with pouting lips and flirtatious tosses of her hair.

But Jonathan Crane, long and lanky, with a brooding air and a dark sense of humour that bordered on the macabre, was fairly intimidating. He was less a man and more of a mood that descended heavily on a place.

Even in nothing but his ragged costume pants and tension bandages holding his beaten ribs together, he was more of a force of nature, a thunder storm in the night, than a human being.

He scared her.

She would never admit that to anyone, but the Scarecrow's modus operandi was effective. He wanted to strike fear and he did it, he could still do it to her with just a look.

Pacing about her bedroom, tidying up, trying to make herself busy as she waited for him, she focused on every sound coming from her bathroom.

A clatter and a growled 'shit' had her moving across the room to the bathroom door and knocking.

“Are you alright?”

There was no sound and for a moment she rest her hand on the doorknob, prepared to burst in, when he snarled.

“I'm fine.”

Selina waited at the door, eyes on the wood grain patterns, before she asked, “do you need help?”

“No,” he spat. “I just...I knocked something over.”

“Maybe I should put the water in a basin or bowl for you,” she suggested, not even thinking when she ran the water that he'd chase her out of the room.

“I'm not a child, Selina,” he said firmly.

Was that the first time he had used her name?

It felt like it.

It was such a moment to use it.

For some odd reason Crane using her name had crossed her personal boundaries more than them sharing a bed, more than her seeing him naked, more than anything they had shared so far.

She felt her blood run hot at the idea of him even knowing her Christian name and she didn't know entirely why.

For a moment she was tempted to try his own name on her tongue, working it around in her mouth, before she reclaimed her senses and stepped back from the door.

There was such a rasp to his voice, it was more of a whispered growl than a voice really and she wondered how he was even human.

Maybe he wasn't. Jonathan Crane being anything but human wasn't the strangest thing that she had ever come across in Gotham.

And the more she thought about him, the more she was convinced he wasn't human. She couldn't imagine him with parents, or him growing up as a boy, losing teeth and skinning his knees, playing with toys or wearing a backpack to school. The very idea of any of that happening to him was baffling to her.

And yet he had fallen off a building and broke, shattered on the asphalt like a porcelain doll.

A very human trait indeed.

“Don't be stupid,” she huffed to herself under her breath, returning to her cleaning.

The bathroom door was thrown open suddenly, causing her to tense, prepared for a fight, and Crane stood there, hand on the frame to keep himself upright, bare chest rising and falling, damp from his bath, a towel around his narrow hips, secured a little too precariously, slung low.

For a moment he looked like a lover ready to take her roughly and hotly in her bed and Selina had to chase down that heat she felt rising in her cheeks.

“I need you,” he said in a tone which didn't help her treacherous libido.

She set the blouse she was holding down on the top of her vanity and followed him back into the bathroom.

“Did you decide to wash my entire bathroom floor too?” She asked, stepping over puddles on her way to the sink.

“I had some difficulty.”

“But you were too proud to ask for help earlier?” She demanded, emptying the sink and filling it with fresh water to continue his bath.

He sighed deeply. “I am trying very hard to pretend we're not doing this, could you please do me the same courtesy?”

“Sounds almost like I have you at my mercy,” she teased. “Where did you leave off?”

“Just my back, legs and hair,” he said.

“Well, I'm glad you wore a towel for the occasion,” she returned, kneeling to wash his legs first.

“Not that it was entirely necessary,” he spat. “Since you've already violated me.”

“For the record,” Selina argued. “We were checking you over for injuries and your costume was soaked in sweat and blood and all kinds of filth. We didn't know if the blood was yours or not.”

Looking up at him, to where he had rested his head against the wall behind her toilet, his eyes closed, she sighed and added, “I am sorry if you felt that way. We were honestly worried about you.”

“Worried?” He inquired, eyes popping open.

“You know we have to stick together, us outcasts.”

“I have never stuck to anyone,” he stated, sounding almost horrified by the implication that he had ever been friends with anyone.

Standing up, done with his legs, she returned to the sink to wring out the sponge.

“You don't like people, do you?” She asked.

“What's to like? We're base animals, either fighting or fucking our way through life.”

“Is that honestly what you think of people, Jon?” She asked, returning to him and helping him turn around so she could wash his back.

“Our goals in life are simple, we want to win.”

“Win what?” She asked.

“Exactly.”

She continued to wash him, unable to really figure out his train of thought.

“You were, what? An orphan? Abandoned as a child?” He asked.

Selina was quiet.

“All you want out of life is security, financial, physical. You steal, because you worry you will one day have nothing. If your parents didn't want you, they shouldn't have fucked. Base creatures.” He repeated firmly.

Swallowing hard, hating that he knew her so well, when really, he shouldn't know her at all, she asked, “what about you, then? What do you want out of life?”

“Chaos.”

“Liar.”

“I like to be the reminder to people that their comfort, their stability, can one day be taken from them. I like to remind them that they aren't so well guarded. I love to see them confront their fears.”

“Why?”

He eased back onto the close toilet as she finished with his back and eyed her like a cat, unblinking, somewhat judgmental.

She turned from him to make herself busy with the sink in an effort to avoid his gaze.

“There is nothing in the darkness,” he said almost gently. “And this is what scares most people. Nothing. No Devil, no God and no angels to save them. We are thrown to chaos and chance.”

Squeezing water out of the sponge, Selina remained silent. She didn't know what to say to that.

“We mortals don't like to think that everything is out of our control so we believe in thing's like fate and luck, but it's chaos. And that is what drives our fear, the harmony to the symphony of humanity is fear and chaos.”

“You must be real fun at parties,” she said wryly.

He looked up at her with his pretty green eyes, before looking away.

After a moment, she asked, “so what's the melody?”

Crane looked over at her curiously.

“If chaos and fear is the harmony, then what's the melody of humanity?”

“Enjoying the little things,” he replied simply.

Thinking he was joking, she laughed.

But Crane merely blinked up at her.

“Oh.”

* * *

 

She had made him some tea when he woke later and they sat together on her couch, eyes on the television, though it was dark and quiet.

With her own hands wrapped around a hot mug of coffee, she curled in on herself, knees to her chest, hands half hidden by an overly large sweater.

Outside the November weather was turning grey and stormy, so she opted to remain inside for the day. Though in the silence, she was beginning to wish she had gone out.

Reading one of the true crime books she had bought for him, Crane seemed at ease holding it propped on his knee, while his single useful hand moved to turn the pages now and then. He looked like he had many years of good practice in reading and sipping tea, even despite being down an arm.

Squinting at the print, the man's mouth moved ever so as he read and Selina was distracted by the intensity in his gaze.

“You wear glasses, don't you?” She asked.

“Hn.”

“For reading?”

“I'm near sighted,” he replied, still reading. “Though at my age,” he added, looking over and up at her, “I'm beginning to think I need bifocals.”

“Is your book any good?” She asked conversationally, not practised in small talk enough to know anything else to say.

Taking a sip of tea, using his elbow to keep his book open on his knee, Crane eyed her over the rim of his mug. He set the mug down again and inhaled, “what's your fascination with cats?”

“Who wouldn't be fascinated by them?” She returned. “Did you know cats domesticated themselves? It began as a symbiotic relationship with humans. Where humans were, there were grains and where there was grains, there was rats and mice, and cats came around to hunt the vermin and eventually the cats became companions to farmers and soon became the ideal pets of royalty. It's why the Ancient Egyptian's worshiped cats as guardians of the home and hearth, they kept the vermin away from the food.”

Taking another long, slow sip of his tea, Crane set his mug down, before closing his book and setting it aside in order to turn to face her better.

“I didn't know that,” he admitted.

She smiled. “Well, now you do, Professor.”

“Tell me more.”

Selina paused for a moment. “About cat's?”

“Hm.”

“Well, they believe the spread of the Black Plague was in part due to cats being condemned by the pope, so they took to burning the poor things and the rat population exploded, leading to the spread of the disease.”

Crane was listening intently, which unnerved her. Men didn't listen to women like he was listening, at least none of the one's she had dated. In fact, no one had ever asked her about her knowledge of cats (which was wide and deep as the ocean). Most of them didn't care much about her beyond what she could do for them as a professional thief or what she could do to them as a woman.

In fact, she couldn't recall anyone ever caring about her useless cat trivia and it kind of ticked at her brain that Crane was perhaps mocking her.

“You don't really care about cats, do you?” She asked.

Crane sort of jerked his head back, before his tongue peeked out between his lips and he wet them. “Why would I ask you to continue if I didn't care to listen?”

“You...really?” She demanded.

“You keep horrible company if you think I was being facetious.” He remarked. “I genuinely don't know anything about cats.”

“Oh, I...I can't tell when you're sincere or not, Jon.”

“I'm always sincere.” He said simply.

“Are you?” She demanded doubtfully.

“You have a very gentle side you don't show people,” he remarked, picking up his mug of tea again. “Why the walls, I wonder.”

“Because when you expose the soft underbelly, there's usually someone waiting to lance it deep.” She stated.

“Hm.”

“Even you have a touch of humanity to you,” she argued.

“Who implied I didn't?” He demanded, almost sounding insulted.

“You're not exactly a personable man, Jon.”

Beside her Jonathan Crane set his mug on his knee and rubbed the handle with his thumb, eyes on the clear brown liquid inside.

It was the first human thing she had seen him do, something so small, yet so telling. He was a man of flesh and blood after all.

“Perhaps I never learned how to connect to other people,” he mused. “My upbringing was one that placed the glass between myself and others at an early age. I learned that distance is the best defence to that metaphoric lance you spoke of.”

Selina was quiet for a moment, unsure what to say, not wanting to ruin the moment with some bumbling platitude. After a moment of awkward silence, she said, “I suppose we don't become criminals coming from healthy families.”

“Now,” he began in a tone which was clearly the beginning of a new subject, “what do you call a group of cats?”

“A clowder.”

* * *

 

“Lina! I brought beer!”

They had been sitting for a few hours in companionable silence, when her door was thrown open and Harley entered like the force she was, holding a twenty-four pack on her shoulder.

“Pam says it's low brow, but I don't give a shit!” Harley went on, marching into the room. “Hiya, Professor!”

“Harleen,” Crane returned.

With everything that had happened since that morning, Selina had forgotten that it was girl's night, when Pam and Harley would come over and they would eat popcorn and watch bad movies in their pyjamas. She checked her phone, something she hadn't done in a while and noticed the warning texts from Pam that they were heading over. Somehow she had missed the vibration from her phone.

“I'm sorry,” she said to Crane. “I forgot they were coming over."

“Don't let me stop you,” he replied, nose deep in his book.

Hurrying to her feet to stop Harley from cramming the entire beer case in her fridge, Selina greeted Pam who was setting down grocery bags of snacks.

“Is _he_ still here?” Pam demanded.

“Yeah,” she returned, “you both abandoned him with me, so yeah he's still here.”

“Ugh,” the red head sighed and ducked into the other room.

Harley hopped onto her kitchen counter. “I wanted to watch like all of Idris Elba's movies, but Pam vetoed them.”

“All of them?” She demanded, opening her fridge to tuck some of the snacks away. Usually things which were bad for them, cheesecake, ice cream, beer, chilled wine, sometimes blended girl drinks.

“Eat me, you creepy asshole!” Pam barked from the other room.

Selina straightened up. “Did she go in there just to fight with Crane?”

“She has been in a mood all day,” Harley confessed.

Hurrying into the living room, where Pam was glaring hard at Crane on her couch, Selina tried to diffuse the situation.

Crane, who hadn't even bothered to look up from his book, replied calmly, “charming.”

“Pam,” Selina said. “Why don't you go and get the drinks blended.”

_We're going to need them._

At this point, Harley had ambled into the living room and was fiddling with Selina's stereo. Pulling out her ipod, she stuck it on the slot and picked her own music, blasting Billy Joel loudly.

One by one Selina's cats fled from their comfortable positions beside Crane on the couch, before the man himself closed his book and painfully rose to his own feet.

At first she thought he was going to leave the room, but he instead eased down into the chair off to the side of the television and propped his broken leg up on the ottoman, watching Harley as she danced erratically by the stereo.

There was a second where Crane frowned, then lifted himself enough to pull Dot from under his ass.

Selina moved to take her stuffed cat from him, flushing and mouthing 'sorry'. He waved her apology off calmly.

“I always wanted to go on a safari,” he explained. “This is better because the wildlife came to me.”

“Stop playing that fucking song,” Pam growled from the kitchen. “I swear to God, Harley!”

“What's that?” Harley shouted back. “Turn it up? Okie doke!”

“Can I get you a drink?” Selina asked Crane, hoping to appease him with booze.

“It can only help,” he said, still watching Harley as she flailed about and tried to sing along with the song, falling behind and making up half of the words.

Setting Dot on a nearby end table, Selina hurried back into the kitchen where Pam was sullenly making drinks.

“Sorry I forgot about tonight,” she apologized.

“It's okay, we weren't going to let you cancel anyways,” Pam said with a small grin. “How have thing's been with whatshisface?”

Inhaling, Selina pondered her words carefully. “Uh...fine. He's been polite.”

“Good, I'll put his dick in a vice if you want.”

“He might like that,” she muttered as the same Billy Joel song started again.

“Harley!” Pam hollered.

“I'm trying to learn the lyrics!” Harley shouted from the other room.

“She has been playing that song for three days straight on repeat.” Pam said. “I know the Hague would have something to say about this sort of human right's violation.”

Dumping some potato chips into a bowl, Selina took them into the living room to find Harley in the middle of undressing to get into her pyjamas.

Crane sat on the chair stark still, eyes forward.

“Harley! Crane is right there!” Selina scolded, setting the bowl down on the coffee table.

“He doesn't mind!” Harley argued, her shirt over her head, bra riding up, flashing her underboobs.

“I do,” the man muttered so that only Selina could hear.

“I am so sorry,” she murmured back to him.

“Harley! Change in the other room!” Pam entered the living room, standing by the archway.

Standing awkwardly by Crane's chair, Selina exhaled and placed her hand on her hip.

Harley's shirt landed at Crane's foot.

“Interesting,” Crane said.

“It's only one night,” Selina said, hoping to lessen his suffering. Reaching for the bowl of chips, she held it out to him. “Chip?”

 


	5. Bee Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crane fucks up. He really fucks up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look! You guys are really great for leaving me some comments! Shout out to enchantersnight, DittyWrites and Vail_of_Iron for the support! Love you guys!
> 
> I can't remember what sex Craw was, so...fuck it. Craw's a lady bird in this fic!
> 
> Things are heating up in this chapter, so...enjoy!

#  Chapter Five: Bee Girl

**Crane**

  


He was doing his best impression of a fly on the wall.

Four movies into the women's night and they didn't show any signs of letting up.

With his ribs throbbing from his prone position in the chair, Crane watched as Harley loudly debated the merits of men over women as far as oral stimulation went and couldn't help but find the entire discussion fascinating.

He had no real experience with actual women who acted like he wasn't there and as a psychologist, he enjoyed the study in what went on when men weren't around.

“A mouth is a mouth, Harley,” Selina argued. “As long as it's skilled, you can't tell the difference.”

“Sure you can!” Harley argued. “Men never shave close enough and to be honest, I don't like beard burn on my lady bits, you know?”

“So beard burn is the only difference to you?” Selina asked.

“Women are inherently better at everything sexual,” Pam declared, sipping daintily at her wine. “We are more in tune with subtle suggestions. Men view sex the way bulls view china shops.”

Crane snorted despite himself.

“Comments, Professor?” Pam demanded coldly.

“Not at all, Pamela.” He replied.

“Am I wrong?” The woman snapped. “You've probably never eaten a pussy in your life. I can't imagine anyone would let you touch them, let alone a self respecting woman.”

“If thinking that makes you feel less insignificant, Pamela, then sure. I am a horrible lover who's had little experience.” Crane replied.

“Insignificant?” Pam demanded loudly. “Who invited you to this anyways? Go crawling back to your hole, you sick fuck!”

“Pam,” Selina said. “I think you've had enough wine for the night.”

“I say they should fight,” Harley stated. “Get it out of their system.”

“I don't know you well enough, Pamela,” Crane began. “But whichever man hurt you enough to turn you against an entire sex is probably getting his comeuppance somewhere in hell.”

“Wanna join him?” Pam snarled, moving to lunge at him.

She was intercepted smoothly by Selina, who caught her friend by the waist.

“We're having a good night, Pam,” Selina said gently. “Let's just get back to the movie, okay?”

“He's not one of them, Pam,” Harley said. “We like the Professor, remember?”

“I don't have to like him,” Pam growled, easing back down. “He talks to me again and I'll string him up by his neck.”

“For a lesbian you sure know how to promise a man a good time, Pamela,” Crane couldn't resist getting one last dig in.

“Crane!” Selina warned him archly. “Can you not push your luck?”

“He can't help it,” Harley added her two cents. “That's how you know he likes you.”

“Thank you, Harleen,” he said sincerely.

She gave him the double guns, before she turned to Pam and in her most professional tone said, “he pushes away people he likes because of his fear of forming attachments. It stems from a childhood of being bullied by his peers and neglected by parents who never believed he was worth their attention. He feels like the Machiavellian Prince, that it's better to be feared and reviled than loved. Because if he's hated or feared, he cannot be loved and therefore he cannot be hurt if that love is betrayed.”

Crane inhaled deeply. He sometimes forgot that she knew the game as well as he did when it came to psycho-analysis.

“Thank you, Harleen,” he insisted a little more firmly.

Everyone was quiet and it was rather awkward, Crane felt like he really wanted to throw himself off the balcony.

“Well,” Pam began softly, “she got your number.”

“Let's get back to the movie,” Selina said.

 

* * *

 

By the time four in the morning came around, Crane was lightly dozing in his chair, while at his foot the women were spread out on blankets and pillows in a nest of comfort on the floor with all three cats, the couch shove back and out of the way.

The last movie had ended and the television was resting on the home screen of the video app.

Outside in the night sky the bat signal was lit, causing the room to be bathed in a soft blue glow, waking Crane who was more or less resting his eyes.

He struggled to peer over his shoulder at the window, before deciding to get to his foot and investigate.

Picking his way carefully over the bodies and the cats, he approached the window and gazed out into the night. Wanting to get closer to the action, desperate for something after days of nothing but pill highs and pain, he opened the balcony door and stepped out into the cold November air, regretting it the instant his bare foot touched the cold tile of Selina's balcony.

Below him Gotham was alive with sirens and activity.

“You shouldn't be out here without a jacket,” someone said from his left. “It's frigging November.”

Beside him Selina was holding a thick comforter wrapped around her shoulders, looking smaller than usual in the mass of cloth. Her black hair was tousled from sleep, piled high in a messy bun, her eyes bleary.

For a moment Crane wondered if he woke her by getting up, she had been closest to him on the floor.

“For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.” He quoted.

“Cheery.”

“Schopenhauer.”

“I don't need you getting sick on top of being broken,” she went on firmly, small, strong hand grasping at his wrist. “Come on back inside.”

Crane narrowed his eyes at the bat signal in the sky.

“Come on, it's not your fight,” she urged. “I'll help you to bed.”

“Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man,” he whispered.

“What?” Selina asked.

“Also Schopenhauer,” he replied, turning from the signal to face her. "Reminded me of you, somewhat."

In the near dark her pale features were glowing like the full moon as she peered up at him from the depths of the comforter.

How childlike and innocent she seemed, how perfectly beautiful.

It amused him to think that this women was such a feared creature as the legendary Catwoman, because standing before him, barely clearing his chest, she was so perfectly small and so perfectly real.

If Jonathan Crane were a lesser man, he would have treasured her in moments like this. But all he could think of at that moment was how beautiful poisonous creatures were as well. The colours of their scales and plumes denoting the dangers of drawing close.

But he was still a man of flesh and blood, prone to moments of foolishness, and when she reached up and touched a hand to his bare chest, he felt his heart betray him as it fluttered uselessly in his chest at the gesture.

“You're freezing,” she said. “Come inside, Jonathan.”

At the sound of his Christian name tumbling from her lips in such a firm and commanding tone, he sort of snapped out of his early morning reverie and gathered himself together with a deep inhale, before nodding.

He paused in mid movement at a fluttering by his hip and glanced down to where Craw had alighted on the balcony railing.

“Hey girl,” he greeted in mild surprise. “Found me, hm?”

Resting his crutch under his left arm, he reached out the best he could and allowed his beloved crow to hop onto his hand.

She pecked affectionately at his face, chittering in a way crows did when being social.

So enraptured by the appearance of his bird, that Crane forgot Selina was waiting for him by the balcony doors, her bare feet freezing in the cold.

“Are you hungry, my love?” He asked her, pressing his forehead against the soft feathers of her head. “Did you miss me? How in the world did you find me, love?”

Craw reached out with her beak and delicately groomed his hair, Crane kissed her on the tip of her beak and smiled a little.

“Wow, you do smile,” Selina said, breaking the moment.

Forgetting about her presence, Crane scowled deeply and set Craw on his bad shoulder, the minor pain inconsequential to having his bird with him.

“Small things,” he murmured.

“She's lovely,” Selina went on, approaching them. “Is she...tame?” Reaching out her hand, Selina tugged it back quickly as Craw took a snap at her fingers.

“No,” Crane replied calmly. “You have to sing to her.”

“What?”

“Bee girl, you're gonna die,” he crooned to Craw softly, his finger reaching up to stroke at the feathers just above her beak. “You don't wanna be famous, you want to be shy.” Removing the bird from his shoulder with his hand again, he held her out to Selina, still singing to his crow. “Do your dances alone in your room. Becoming a star, will become your doom. Bee girl, be a girl.” He nodded encouragingly to her, still singing to his bird to calm her, as Selina bravely reached out again, her fingers brushing over Craw's head.

“If I told anyone you sung to your bird, they'd laugh me out of Gotham,” Selina remarked, still stroking Craw with gentle hands.

“It's the only way I've found to calm her,” he pointed out quickly. “You know time is long, and life is short,” he went on singing as the bird got agitated again. “Begin to live while you still can. Believe in nothing, believe me.”

Selina shuffled in close to him again, the warmth from her reminding him how cold it was out as she sort of half wrapped them all in her comforter, shifting from one foot to the other to warm them.

“Those who can be trusted can change their mind. When the anxious is the present, unwrap your gifts, take your time. Everything you imagine needn't be stuck in your mind. Bee girl, be a girl.” This time, Selina was the one who continued singing, crooning gently to his bird as Craw hopped from his hand onto Selina's head.

She laughed and ducked a little in surprise.

Crane had never seen Craw warm to someone so quickly. Though Selina, a great lover of animals, it shouldn't have surprised him.

Craw settled on Selina's shoulder, pecking and grooming at her messy hair.

“Are you hungry, sweetie?” Selina asked the crow, turning and taking the bird into the penthouse.

Following them, Crane argued, “she's not housebroke.”

“Doesn't matter,” Selina replied quietly, making her way into the kitchen. “It's cold out and she's hungry.”

Ducking into the kitchen, Crane eased down at the island bar stool, wincing as his leg bumped against the counter in front of him.

Selina opened her fridge. “What does she like?”

“Crows eat garbage, I'm sure anything you can find for her she'll eat.” He replied with a sigh, getting tired of his battered body.

Pulling out some sandwich meat, Selina turned to face Jon, hand delicately feeding Craw as she spoke, “she's so big and healthy, you must love her a lot.”

“Gluttonous little fool that she is,” Crane returned.

“Oh no,” Selina scolded him, laughing as Craw dropped some meat on her shoulder. “She's beautiful!”

Watching the woman as she lit up at Craw's antics, Crane saw an entire side to Selina Kyle she hadn't revealed yet. One of a woman capable of great love and an almost matronly patience. She was shining in that moment, everything about her was breathtaking and beautiful.

Something strange came over Crane, it caused his heart to speed up and his jaw to tighten. He thought it anger at first, though he saw nothing to be angry about. Jealousy? He wasn't jealous.

It was a foreign feeling, something primal and it worried him.

His hands twitched, fingers fluttering and he felt adrenaline pumping through his veins.

He wasn't certain if he wanted to grab hold of her and take her like an animal, or kiss her breathless and gentle like a man.

Maybe both.

“You spoil her and she'll never leave you in peace,” he cautioned Selina.

The woman smiled broadly and kissed Craw's beak as the bird nibbled at her earlobe.

Crane suddenly became fully aware of the dangers of Selina Kyle, how so many men fell easily to her charms. It wasn't just her beauty, it was this entire woman with a deep and vast array of emotions and feelings.

She invoked in him a desire to both possess and protect.

He didn't like that. It was too tempting, too dangerous.

If he thought that his presence put her on edge, he fast realized that she was putting him well beyond his comfort zone. That wall of glass he put between himself and others was quickly cracking under a few smiles and soft laughter from her.

Standing up, despite his cold and weary body, he moved around the island to stand beside Selina, if only to calm his rapidly beating heart.

He didn't know why he thought that would soothe him, but it did. Moving to stand just to her right, he reached over and played with Craw's little leathery feet as they danced and hopped happily on Selina's shoulder. His finger brushing against some of Selina's hair, which had fallen from her bun, pushing it back from Craw's landing pad, revealing Selina's smooth, creamy neck where it sloped into her shoulder.

As much as he mocked Selina for being so small compared to him, Crane found himself delighted by the idea that if he were fully healed, he could easily grab hold of her and toss her around. Onto a bed, perhaps, over a counter, across a tabletop.

He enjoyed these wicked, dark thoughts, while Selina enjoyed Craw's antics.

“You're looking at me like you're going to eat me,” Selina remarked suddenly, her voice low and husky, snapping Crane out of his sinful thoughts.

“Perhaps not tonight,” he replied, his voice matching hers in tone and cadence.

Selina's eyes drifted down from his, to his lips, to his chest and up again. “I've been told I'm delicious,” she returned with a cat-like smile.

Reaching his good hand up, he lay it on her shoulder, between Craw and her neck, before slipping it around to the back of her neck. He wanted to test that theory, he was only human, after all.

Using the back of her neck, he pulled her to him roughly and pressed his mouth to hers, it was more of an assault than a kiss, but she eagerly returned it.

And he found she was right. She tasted so fucking good.

He was going to eat her whole.

His crutch fell to the floor with a loud clatter, breaking them apart as it snapped them back to reality.

Crane mentally berated himself for his moment of weakness, while before him Selina seemed almost smug, placing her hand on her hip as Craw continued to nip and nibble at her hair.

“Shut up in there!” Pam called out sleepily.

Without taking her eyes off of him, Selina's pink tongue slipped out between her well kissed lips and licked at her bottom lip.

The look in her eyes told him he had fucked up. She was on to him now, she had the upper hand and for a moment he considered apologizing for his weakness in offering her the power like an idiot.

Was it panic that caused his heart to speed up again?

No, he didn't feel fear.

So what was it about her predatory look that had his chest rattling with the thunder of his heartbeat?

And then Selina smiled, it was a gentle grin, but it was dangerous. It said she had him right where she wanted him. She knew where they stood now and she was no longer awkward about him invading her personal space because this was something familiar. He had fallen for her trap like many, many men before him.

Perhaps it was a little fear that he felt.

Seemingly more confident now, Selina Kyle (the woman he knew her to be), turned away from him and back to the fridge, opening it and digging through it for more food for Craw, while behind her Crane had a mild panic attack for the first time in years.

She had thrown him with her reaction to his kiss, though he wasn't sure what he had been expecting, he certainly wasn't expecting her to match his ferocity step for step.

The few women he had been with had been overwhelmed by his intensity, but not Selina.

Using the counter to lean on without his crutch, he watched as Selina went back to cooing and coddling his bird, effectively ignoring his presence.

Crane was a fool, left standing helpless in her kitchen, unable to retreat from his mistake, forced to watch her as she gloated a little to Craw.

As the panic dissipated, anger replaced it. Indignant and righteous, and Crane reached out again for Selina, wanting to put her in her place, to kiss her, perhaps fuck her into submission, but she sort of danced away from his hand, leaving it to hang uselessly between them.

Her eyes read amusement as she cooed to Craw.

“See how he doesn't like to lose the power,” she whispered to the bird. “Not so scary anymore, is he? Just like any other man,” she added, eyes burning into his.

She said that like she had been expecting more from him. Like he had somehow let her down.

That burned him more than her smug air and he inhaled deeply.

 _Control yourself, Jonathan._ He cautioned. _She wants you to prove her right. She wants you to lose your self control._

_She wants you to take her roughly, to exert your power again._

Ah, he realized, this was her way of flirting.

And suddenly he was the one with the power again and his heartbeat returned to its normal, easy pace.

“I've come close enough to danger for the night,” he remarked calmly, eyes dropping to his crutch. “My crutch, if you will?”

“Hm,” she replied, feeding Craw a piece of strawberry. “My hands are full, maybe I could wake Pam to get it for you?”

Crane didn't like this precarious shifting of power back and forth, so he sighed a little and decided to retrieve his crutch himself.

The problem was, his good hand was holding him upright, and couldn't be used to snatch his crutch up from the floor.

In order to stave off having his hand ball into a fist on the top of the counter, he drummed his long fingers, hoping to wait her out.

She smiled up at him almost innocently.

Reflexively at this taunting gesture, his hand clenched into a fist despite his efforts and he was about to slam it hard on the counter top, before he inhaled deeply.

“Please?” He asked.

This seemed to please her greatly, her violet eyes flashing something, before she said, “let me see what I can do.”

Setting Craw on the back of the island bar stool, Selina moved to kneel before him, retrieving his crutch, eyes flickering up from where she knelt.

Her plump, pink lips parted a little and her eyes drifted lower on his form again, before she stood up slowly with the crutch, her breasts brushing against his front as she did so.

Betrayed by his hand, which had lifted halfway to her again, Crane clenched it and exhaled raggedly.

“Here you go,” she said, sticking his crutch under his arm.

Straightening up, ignoring how this entire interaction had caused him to strain against his borrowed pyjama bottoms, Crane thanked her with barely restrained civility.

“Where should we keep your bird?” She asked, turning from him as though she hadn't just aroused the devil himself.

Crane floundered for a moment, unsure whether to continue being enraged at her or to pretend she didn't affect him as much as she did, he settled on cool indifference.

“She's free to come and go with me,” he explained.

“So? Back out into the night?” Selina returned, heading out of the kitchen.

He let the woman go, standing in her kitchen, self hatred and shame pouring into him.

Weakness was something he couldn't abide and his shameless display was making him physically ill.

She was perhaps lucky his body was broken and shattered, because he knew that if he was able, he would have never stopped at the sound of a crutch.

 _Control_ , he warned himself. _Remember the wild animal which bays in your heart, keep it caged. Breathe._

 


	6. Helpless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selina enjoys her power over Crane and things get interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so...full on confession. I don't write smut much, don't care for it. So...this is really...really fucking dirty guys. Um, Ditts...this is for you. I...dude, just...holy shit, man. I will see all of you in hell.
> 
> Head's up for anyone who doesn't like breathplay...um...yeah...Crane has a kink...
> 
> I'm changing the rating on this guys, I think we just turned it up to 11.

#  Chapter 6: Helpless

**Selina**

“Sorry we made such a mess,” Pam said as she hustled Harley out of the door.

“It doesn't matter, this was fun,” Selina replied. “I'll see you guys next weekend.”

Closing the door on her friends, afford Selina a small moment of peace, between the chaos that was Harley and Pam and the mess that was her entire deal with Jonathan Crane, she was mentally exhausted.

On the one hand, she was grateful. A brooding Scarecrow haunting her penthouse was one thing, but a man of flesh and blood with a libido, well now that was something familiar.

She could handle a horny man, what she couldn't handle and what had been grating on her had been an entity known to her as the Master of Fear.

Turning from the door, she wandered into the living room, hips snapping perhaps a little more than they had before.

Sitting in his newly claimed chair by her television, Crane was immersed in his book.

Easing onto the couch, in a spot nearest him, she sighed and asked, “what am I going to do with you?”

Was her tone a little mocking?

Perhaps.

This was comfortable. This flirtatious upper hand she enjoyed having over men was something she was good at. It was the Selina Kyle she showed the world and she felt confident in this role.

Crane, for his part, looked up from under lowered brows, but said nothing, returning his attention to his book.

Oh yeah, this was like putting on a worn and comfortable sweater and she loved it.

“You really shouldn't come into a woman's home and just kiss her in the kitchen unless you plan on following through,” she went on. “Unless...” she playfully glanced at his crotch, “you have difficulties?”

There was no sign that Crane heard her, save for a small tick of a muscle in his jaw, which clenched.

“Maybe it was me,” she went on, enjoying the torture. “I do tend to be too much for most men to handle.”

He continued to ignore her.

“I'm going for a shower,” she said with a small grin. “Do I need to help you bathe after? You didn't get too dirty last night, did you?”

Without waiting for a reply, knowing none would be coming, she got up and wandered into her bedroom, undressing along the way, tossing her dirty clothes into the hamper as she stepped into her bathroom.

 

* * *

 

When she emerged from the shower, she considered dressing for the day and stepping out into the real world if only to give Crane his space.

To be honest, she hadn't been expecting him to kiss her. Just grab hold of her by the back of the neck and yank her in for a smothering kiss.

But she wasn't opposed to it, which was startling.

He had been the first man since Bruce, who aroused in her that dark, delicious, primal way. It wasn't the urge to fight or fuck or even submit, but a delicate combination of all three.

She wanted to fight for dominance, but she was willing to concede to anyone who could force her into submission. What the hell sort of sexual kink was that? She didn't know whether it made her the sadist or the masochist.

Make no mistake, if she was the one who came out on top, she would most certainly enjoy her position of power, but she wasn't above a good old fashioned struggle. And glasses up to the first man who could dominate her, she would most likely lie back and take it, should any man manage that.

But for now, torturing Crane, knowing somehow that he was reining in that urge he had given in to only just that morning, aroused her more than any cheap throw she had had with any high class man from Gotham's elite.

Knowing he was mortal and susceptible to her sort of made it all the more delicious.

This entire other side to a legendary mystery that was the Scarecrow was so fucking interesting to her.

Maybe this was her kink? Like discovering a new species of man, then toying with him, before fighting him to the sheets.

Was that the cat nature in her? Too much time behind the cat ears and she was suddenly playing with her food before consuming it?

Changing from her towel into yoga shorts that she knew were entirely too tight and a chemise that showed her breasts if she leaned forward just right, she decided to stay in for the day, wanting to play with Crane just a little bit longer. Sitting at her vanity to do her hair, before going back out to the hunt.

* * *

 

Stepping into the living room later, she huffed a little to find he had fallen asleep in his chair, his book on his lap. Removing the book, she set it aside and fetched a warm fleece blanket from the back of her couch to drape over him.

Walking to her phone as it buzzed, she picked it up from the coffee table and checked the incoming text message.

It was just a picture of Harley posing next to a fuck ugly pug, her bottom teeth sticking out to mock the pooch.

Smiling, she text the woman back.

_**Looks like Waylon.** _

There was a moment, as Selina eased down onto the couch, before Harley replied back.

_professor seemed real grumpy this morning you piss him off or was it pam?_

Selina hesitated, glancing over at the sleeping man, before typing.

_**Isn't he always pissy?** _

_no this was different_

_**There was an...incident. Hey, Harls, do you think he'd be good in bed?** _

Glancing over almost anxiously at Crane, Selina bit her bottom lip, before adding.

_**Just curious.** _

There was almost too long of a pause, where Selina began to worry Harley was somewhere losing her shit over Selina's curiosity.

_i wouldn't lina_

_**The man is sleeping in my bed, Harls. I can't help but be curious, okay?** _

_he's not for you_

_**Theoretically.** _

_oh theoretically he'd be fucking wild but you shouldn't sample all 31 flavors_

_**You fucked the Joker.** _

_fair point_

Selina smiled at Harley's text.

_just remember that jonathan crane isn't the solution to your problem_

Her phone buzzed just as she received that message. It was from Pam.

**DON'T FUCK THE SCARECROW, LINA.**

Selina laughed softly, figuring her and Harley were together and that nothing was sacred. She added Pam to her conversation with Harley and typed.

_**You both telling me not to do it makes me want to do it even more.** _

She smiled and bit her bottom lip at her friend's reactions. Enjoying baiting them.

_let me know how it goes i always wondered_

**FUCKSAKES, LINA**

_**I'm gonna.** _

Beside her in his chair, Crane shifted and winced, ending her texting. She held her phone to her chest and watched as he tried to adjust his broken leg on the ottoman.

Leaning forward, she helped him move it closer to the centre, eyes on him cautiously, waiting for him to wake.

Forgetting about torturing him for a moment, she stood up and moved to his side, whispering, “Jon? Maybe we should get you to bed.”

He opened one green eye and peered at her for a moment, before nodding sleepily. “Yeah, my ribs feel like shit.”

“Come on,” she said. “You'll feel better if you can stretch out.”

Crane allowed her to help him up, swaying a little unsteadily due to exhaustion and Selina was classy enough to feel guilty for her and the girls keeping him up most of the night.

“You could have to gone to bed last night,” she pointed out a little lightly, scolding him for her rude behaviour.

He didn't say anything.

Managing to get him into her bed with no difficulty, she eased her hip beside his and sat there for a second, tucking her knees up and crossing her ankles.

“Do you need a pill?”

He shook his head, eyes on her, narrowed and dangerous, following the length of her bare legs, up to her hip and then down again.

“Are you wearing those shorts for my benefit?” He demanded suddenly.

“I have never worn anything for anyone's benefit but my own,” she returned archly.

“Selina,” he began.

“You know what you need, Jon?” She cut him off.

“For my own personal rendition of Misery to be over?”

She grinned wickedly. “Jon,” she began, amused by his grumpy veneer and his Stephen King reference. She knew better, now that she knew what he was, she didn't worry about him at all. He was the mouse. “You need a good choking out by a professional hand.”

“What?” He snapped, leaning back from her only just a little.

“You need a silk scarf wrapped around your fucking neck and a hand that isn't your own wrapped around your pathetic cock.” She whispered, leaning towards him.

Crane sort of froze for a moment.

In the silence, Selina felt her power grow and it made her wetter than a nun at an orgy. This was what she liked. A man at her mercy, completely unaware of just what she was about to do to him.

“Make it a belt,” he returned darkly.

Thrown for a second, off her attack plan by his compliance, Selina recovered quickly and nodded.

“Deal.” Getting to her feet, she headed for her closet on legs that shook with the thrill of the hunt. “And just to be clear,” she added, opening her closet, “this isn't about love.”

“I would have to be a blind idiot to think you choking me to orgasm would be about anything even remotely close to love,” he retorted.

“I can be a professional, if you can,” she added, pulling out one of her best belts. Tossing the belt towards the bed, she threw an old silk scarf she hated out after it, before she slipped out of her shorts and her top, digging through her closet for her gear.

“What are you doing?”

“If I'm doing this, Jon, then I'm dressing for the occasion.” She replied.

“Just get naked, I don't need an entire performance art piece,” he growled almost impatiently.

“You don't want me choking you out dressed as Catwoman?” She inquired.

He paused for a moment in thought, before shaking his head. “I don't need the pageantry.”

Turning around, she shrugged and stepped out of her underwear, approaching the bed completely naked. “Your loss.”

He watched her approach with alert, interested eyes and the way they dragged up and down her body gave her the clear hint he was halfway to cumming in his pants already.

That and the tent he was sporting tipped her off.

She imagined she wouldn't have to do much more than choke him and maybe rub her tits in his face for him to shoot off. Easy job, and it would relax him a little around her, maybe he wouldn't be so fucking miserable for the rest of their imprisonment together.

Easing onto the bed, careful of his ribs and his leg, she slipped her hands over his thighs, heading for the waistband of his pants.

“Normally I give a safe word,” she explained, eyes on his cock as it sprang free from his pants. It was actually one of the nicer cocks she had seen, long, good girth, no weird colour or marks. If she could rate a man's junk on terms of beauty, it would be a nine out of ten. The lost mark was due to the fact that it was attached to Jonathan Crane, not a man she would normally fuck, but...well he was there. Something to play with and it had been a good month since she last got off with another human. “But since you won't be speaking much, I can tell you to tap my hip twice if it gets to be too much.”

He gave her a strange look.

Reaching for the scarf first, she said, “I'm going to start slow, then we'll get into the heavier stuff. Okay?”

Crane nodded once.

Bridging herself over his body, mindful of his sore spots, she leaned down and brushed her tongue over his bottom lip.

He raised up to meet her mouth in a kiss, but she drew back with a grin, slipping the scarf under his neck and crossing it, one end in each of her hands as she settled on his hips. “Maybe no kissing, wouldn't want you to get attached.”

Behind her, resting against her ass, she felt Crane's cock twitch, but he said nothing, merely gazed up at her.

“Two taps on my hip,” she reminded him, tightening the scarf gently.

His neck was beautiful as he tilted his head back for her and she was so tempted to lick it. All the way from his collarbone to his jaw, but she resisted. She had a job to do.

Wrapping the scarf ends around her hands, twirling her wrists in order to do so, she tightened the scarf even more as his face began to turn a pretty pink.

“I bet all I'd have to do is grind my ass against your virgin dick and it'll explode, hm?” She taunted, easing up on the scarf and allowing him to inhale. “Fucking loser, hard at the mere idea of being dominated. Kind of sad, really.”

He glared up at her, but she only tightened the scarf again, grinning as he dropped his head back for her again.

“What kind of sick fuck gets off on this?” She purred, which was very hypocritical of her since she was leaving a pool of her own juices onto his lower stomach. “Pathetic.”

This time she held the scarf tight until he turned a deep shade of red, before releasing the tension.

He panted as air flowed back into his lungs.

She watched the rise and fall of his chest, enjoying how toned he was there, covered in a beautiful light coat of dark brown hair and a few dark freckles. It was highlighted by the tight binding around his ribs, making it look even more appealing to her.

Leaning down, she decided to just take a little taste of his nipple, just to see how he'd react.

He must have enjoyed it, as his good hand came up and dove through her dark hair, cupping the back of her head loosely.

Not enjoying how almost tender that felt, she sat up again and almost viciously choked him with the scarf, glaring down at him.

“I bet you won't even last long enough for the belt,” she teased. “You'll probably cum all over my back like a high school boy at prom. No self control, that's your problem.”

This time she waited until his chest was hitching, struggling to get air, before she released the scarf, giving him a chance to breathe. His head pressed back into the pillow, his jaw tense and sharp as hell from her viewpoint. His facial structure was more angular than square, giving him all manners of points and lines.

Okay, underneath her, submissive and at her mercy, she had to admit Crane was kind of good looking. Well, he was hot. Okay, so he was pretty sexy when he wasn't brooding or wearing any burlap.

Laughing softly, she pressed back ever so on his cock, cushioning it with her ass cheeks and enjoying the way his eyebrows furrowed deeply.

“What's wrong? Not enjoying yourself?” She asked sweetly. “Maybe we'd better end this then.”

She made a move to get up, going for the belt, but wanting to make a show of leaving him.

Crane grasped at her with his good arm, grunting as he strained his ribs and flopping back down.

“Careful,” she said, moving to run her hands gingerly over his bandaged ribs, genuinely worried he had hurt himself.

“If you leave me like this, I swear I will fucking kill you and everything you love,” he murmured, draping his arm over his eyes.

She smiled and sat back on his lower stomach, hands running over his ribs. And even though she said she wasn't going to kiss him, gazing at the man who was lying in pain and suffering beneath her, she couldn't help but want to press a kiss to the underside of his chin.

It was a hard battle she fought, but she succeeded in talking herself out of it, getting up to retrieve the belt instead. Ducking into her bathroom for a condom too, just in case.

“Are you sure you're okay to go on?” She asked him, settling back in her spot on his stomach. Setting the condom to the side.

He nodded.

“Are you hurting bad?”

“I'll be fine,” he snarled.

“Do you want to cum inside me when you finish?” She asked, holding the condom up. “Or do you want to cum all over your stomach like a pathetic little bitch?”

He actually grinned at her. A real fucking grin, something she had never seen and it almost threw her across the room how fucking charming he looked when he wasn't sulking.

Jonathan Crane had the kind of grin that could make a woman weak in the knees, it drew up at each side with small dimples, revealing nice teeth and not the fangs she had been expecting.

“Lady's choice,” he replied.

She beamed back at him, somehow catching his infectious smile. “I choose to give you a little dignity, you need it right now.”

Seemingly getting a hold of himself, Crane's smile died quickly and he nodded grimly. “Of course.”

A little disappointed to see his smile go, she eased back and down, carefully shifting her weight so she barely brushed his cast. She slipped the condom on quickly and quietly, not wanting to think too much about her task.

For some reason his smile sort of snapped her back to reality.

This was a broken man in more ways than just some ribs and a leg, was she taking advantage of his situation?

Well, no, she thought. He consented very clearly.

But she remembered Harley's warning and her diagnosis of Crane from the night before.

Was she lending too much of her heart to the situation? Could this end badly for her? She was always falling in love with men she should never involve herself with. Was it some kind of masochistic thing? The new year would come and Crane would be gone.

 _This isn't love, you idiot. It's just a sex thing._ She barked at herself.

She sat back on his lower stomach and peered down at him for a moment.

_If it's just a sex thing then why do you want to kiss him at the worst possible moments? Why are you so interested in him finishing inside you? You were all prepared to let him cum on himself like an animal and suddenly you want him inside you? You're the pathetic one, Selina._

“Something's off,” he murmured to her, his rasp huskier than usual due to the circumstances. “What's wrong?”

 _I never took you to be a coward, Selina._ She berated herself. _What's the fucking problem?_

“Selina,” he commanded. “What's wrong?”

“I...thought I heard my phone ringing,” she lied.

Crane didn't buy it, glaring up at her with stony eyes. “Have I...scared you?”

Now there was a fucking wild question coming from the Scarecrow. She nearly laughed in his face, but contained it. “No, relax,” she managed to get herself running again, her lock up over. “Are you ready?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I think we're done here.”

She was about to argue, but he was already squirming out from under her, wincing every time he had to use his abs to move.

Worried about him getting hurt, she eased off him, sitting on the side of her bed nearest her closet, while he struggled to sit up on the opposite side of the bed, leaning back on his good arm to ease the force on his ribs.

She mirrored him, her hand resting beside his in the middle of her bed.

Wanting to apologize, but not having ever had to do that from a...oh God, a bad sexual experience, she bit her bottom lip and wondered how to fuck to fix this mess. How to go back from where she had lead them.

“We're both too broken for this, aren't we?” Crane asked with a breathy laugh, it was more of a mocking scoff.

She didn't know what to say, she didn't know what to do. This had never happened to her before.

Slowly and carefully, Crane eased back, lying horizontally across the bed, his head rest against her hand, hair tickling her.

After a moment, his good arm reached up and grasped her shoulder, tugging her back.

She lay down, mirroring him again, her head at his waist.

“Should have known something was wrong,” he said after a long, long time of silence. “It was the smile that terrified you, hm?”

“It...sort of snapped me out of it, yeah.” She confessed.

“Strange finding out that a man you fear is human.”

Selina laughed despite the situation. “I'm not scared of you.”

“Liar.”

“Delusional.”

“Then what was it?” He demanded after a moment.

She hesitated, unsure herself just what it was.

“Oh, honey,” he rasped mockingly. “Did you fall in love?”

She laughed loudly. “No!” That may have been a half lie. Feeling had become involved, but it wasn't love...it was just...weird. “Don't be nasty.”

“Then what? You got really quiet on me, Selina.”

She shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Come here,” he reached up and tugged at her gently, until she shifted on the bed, turning so she was lying perpendicular beside him and not in an awkward upside down position.

Able to look her in the eye, Crane scrutinized her for a bit, before sighing. “You can use me for sex, Selina. I don't care. We both get off and it's just...like a form of therapy. Don't go bringing emotions into this, silly cat.”

“Trust me, Jon,” she said coolly, “I could never feel anything for you beyond annoyance and disgust.”

“Perfect,” he replied, taking up her hand and placing it at his throat. “Now put this little hand of yours to use.”

She beamed.

“Use that disgust and annoyance,” he urged. “Those should be the only emotions you feel.”

Laughing too hard at how desperate he was to get off, she found she couldn't throttle him properly, sitting up instead.

“Maybe I should tie you up and leave you like this while I go out shopping,” she remarked, tucking her hair behind her ear.

Crane narrowed his eyes at her, his pupils dilating.

It didn't take much to turn that horny fucker on, she'd give him that.

Suddenly, she felt warm and sure of herself again. She'd take his advice, stop admiring how beautiful he was when he was flushed and turned on, she would use her disgust and annoyance with him and turn it into something good for the both of them.

“I was serious,” she said. “I will tie you up and leave you.”

Crane's mouth quirked.

“This time,” she added, leaning down over him. “Think I'll put a ring on it. Keep you from making a premature mess.”


	7. Roll Jordan Roll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crane and Selina philosophize and Selina ascends to power.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thanks to everyone who commented on this work! I was super nervous to post smut, always am. If you haven't caught on yet, all the chapter titles are song titles that I listened to on repeat while writing the chapter. You can check them out or not, your choice.

#  Chapter 7: Roll Jordan Roll

**Crane**

How he had managed to get himself into the position he was currently in was simple. He was incredibly aroused and being ruled by his dick.

Normally, he was a man capable of rational and reasonable thought (to a point), but Selina Kyle was a force beyond a simple woman with curves in all the right places. She was more like a spirit of the earth, or an ancient goddess worshipped for her power and her beauty.

Perhaps it was because he actually trusted her enough to allow her to tie his working limbs up while she left him alone and naked on her bed. She wouldn't kill him. If she wanted him dead she would have left him in that alley.

Still, he regretted his decision to allow her to bind him to her bed as he entered hour three and realized he had to urinate. It was made ten times worse by the cock ring she had slipped on him from a 'toy' box out of her closet.

He wondered what other kinds of things she had in her closet, seemed she entered into this therapy agreement with tools of the professional trade.

Just as he was considering removing his dislocated arm from it's sling to painfully free himself, he heard the door to her penthouse open and close and the unmistakable rustling of bags.

His cock twitched and he glared down at it.

“Easy,” he warned it, feeling betrayed by his own body at just the idea of seeing her naked again.

That was something he knew he'd never get enough of. She was perfect in every way, toned and sleek, pale and bountiful in all the right places. Her breasts were firm, large and jutted out proudly before her, topped with pretty dusty rose nipples. Her hips were wide and begged to be gripped, and while her legs were short (all of her was short), they were sculpted and strong.

As she entered her bedroom, not even sparing him a glance (again, he was beginning to believe she was a pro at this dominatrix thing she had going), he admired her simple outfit.

Once more it seemed she was dressed to kill, tight fitting jeans, a loose shirt that caught all her curves, tucked into the front and boots with heels that looked ready to crush a windpipe or two beneath them.

“I thought you forgot about me,” he growled.

“I did,” she returned, setting a few bags down.

Taking a hit to his ego, he scowled, but said nothing as she turned to him with a smile.

“Oh, are you in pain?”

“I have to urinate,” he returned.

Setting the bags down, she walked over to the bed and eased down, taking hold of his cock without a care, like it was a chore and not a sexual act. Rubbing his precum over the tip with her thumb, she got him good and lubricated before squeezing her way gently down the length of him.

Crane almost came in her hand from the pain and the pleasure, gritting his teeth.

She released him and got up, leaning across to unbind his wrist.

As she did this, he caught her scent from the shirt that brushed over his face and he closed his eyes, inhaling her.

How did the woman manage to be so flawless and so arousing without much more than her scent?

“I bought you some clothes,” she said, moving to untie his good leg. “Didn't think you'd enjoy wandering around in someone's borrowed pyjama bottoms the entire time.”

He eased up carefully to a sitting position on the edge of the bed beside her, hand moving to his throbbing, painful cock.

She slapped his hand hard. “Don't make me tie you up again,” she purred a warning. “Go do what you have to, then right back to bed.”

“You know a man can die from this, right?” He demanded, getting to his feet with her help.

“Well,” she returned lightly, “heal faster, then you can try and fight me on this.”

He shot her a dark look, hoping to scare some sense into her.

Instead she laughed. “The longer you dick around going to pee, the longer you're poor little dick stays in his little necktie.”

Grabbing his crutch, he hobbled off towards the bathroom, naked and shamed.

“Nice ass, Jon,” she called after him. “Wasn't expecting that.”

Lifting the toilet lid, not at all worried about closing the door behind him, he did what he set out to do, while Selina moved about her bedroom behind him.

“I wasn't really sure what you like to wear when you're not in burlap masks and tattered rags,” she called out to him. “So I just bought some easy to wear clothes, some button up shirts so you won't have to struggle into them and some dress pants.”

“That's fine,” he returned, flushing the toilet and setting the toilet seat back down at the glare of the calico cat in the sink. “Which goddamn cat is this in the sink? She's always in here judging my performance.” He shouted out to her, moving to the bathtub to wash his hands.

Selina poked her head into the bathroom. “That's Medea, you have to rub her behind her ears and pat her butt and then she'll move.”

“I'm not doing any of that,” he remarked, picking up his crutch and limping towards her. “Shouldn't have jump through a damned hoop just in order to wash my damned hands.”

“Oh,” Selina said, “you're just mad because you're horny, Jon. Back to bed, I'll finish you off.”

“Like a total professional,” he grumbled. Despite his cool demeanour, his dick twitched again in excitement. She had better finish the fucking job this time, he was not going to deal with being hard the entire two months he was stuck with her.

“I have a present for you,” she said as he eased back into bed. “Since you've been enduring so much shit from me.”

“A gun?” He teased.

Selina pulled out a black bag from among the sea of bags on the floor of her bedroom and approached the bed. “I thought as a reward for good behaviour, I'd let you do a little torture to me.”

“Really?” His mouth salivated at the idea of giving. In his condition he was unable to fight her much, but he had to admit he wasn't used to being the submissive one. The idea of torturing her a little to get off appealed very much to his sick and twisted libido.

Selina tucked her long hair behind her ear almost nervously and said, “I've always wanted a man to do this to me...thought it was as good a time as any. So I stopped by the local tattoo and piercing shop and snatched a few goodies for us.”

“I must admit, you've piqued my interest,” he said.

“But first, you need some relief, hm?” She set the bag aside, leaving it a mystery to him.

Crane eased back on the soft pillows, as much as he wanted to know what was in the bag, his orgasm was a long, long time coming.

Fetching the belt she had first promised to finish him off with, Selina approached the bed, setting it down at his side almost clinically. She removed her shirt and tossed it aside, standing over Crane with gentle eyes.

He was completely entranced by her grace as she climbed on top of him, easing down on his lower stomach where she had decided he would hurt less. He was a little disappointed that she remained fully clothed except for her top. He missed the feeling of her heat and moisture against his body.

This felt a little too impersonal, which he would normally love, but the fact that he had that feeling before, that sensation of turning her on as she worked him to orgasm, rather felt like something missing from this session as she slid the belt around his neck.

Still as she pressed the tongue of the belt through the metal loop and pulled it tight, he forgot about everything but his impending rush as the belt slowly closed off his airway.

Selina's eyes burned into his as she rubbed her jean covered ass against his cock. It was rough on his already over sensitive flesh, but he wasn't about to complain as his vision began to fade and he felt his body struggle, lifting up off the bed in order to chase his denied oxygen.

“Shhh,” she cautioned sadistically. “Relax, Jon.”

Easing up on the belt allowed a small amount of air to be sucked into his desperate lungs and he coughed in his hurry to breathe.

Selina, ran her hands over his chest and his bandaged ribs as he panted and gasped, before she picked up the end of the belt and tugged it tight again.

While one hand held the belt, the other moved over his body, gently rubbing and massaging his flesh.

This time as his vision began to fade, he allowed himself to go wherever she lead him, the belt never letting up, her ass working at his cock easily.

The orgasm was building, he could feel his control slipping as the world began to grey.

“Cum, Jon,” she commanded. “Cum or I swear I will fucking choke you out.”

He fought against the orgasm, wanting this sensation to never end. The power he had handed over to Selina was everything he was, there was nothing else he could offer her but this and he wanted the feeling of her weight on him, of her hand roaming his body, of her sweet voice commanding him and guiding him.

“I'm not going to let you breathe until you make a nasty mess all over my ass, Jon,” she whispered, moving her face close to his, her tongue sliding across his lips.

Betrayed once more by his cock, Crane found himself shuddering and everything that had been building in him since that morning came oozing out, shooting across her ass and up her back, making a mess.

As soon as he released, she pulled the belt from around his neck and kissed him before he could breathe, her mouth sealing his lips from any air viciously.

He didn't care, he sucked in air between breaks in the seal, kissing her back desperately as he continued to ride out one hell of an orgasm.

Pulling away from the kiss, leaving her mouth close enough to his to brush against his lips every time he inhaled, she whispered, “disgusting,” before dismounting him.

He trembled on her bed, coated in sweat and shame, watching as she undressed, removing her soiled clothing and tossing them aside. Smirking a little as he enjoyed the show.

She disappeared into the bathroom and emerged with a warm, wet facecloth. Sitting at his side, she removed the cock ring and began to gently clean him up.

“Must be a side service you offer,” he teased lightly, feeling less like being miserable in the glow of the moment.

She smiled a little.

Reaching down, he tucked her hair behind her ear, a habit he saw her constantly do, figuring he was helping her by doing it for her to keep it out of her face.

Selina leaned a little into his hand and he cupped her chin for a second, before pulling his hand back.

“Are you alright?” He checked with her. Crane may have been a sadist on the streets as Scarecrow, but he always prided himself on being a gentleman with lovers. It may have been residual professionalism from his time as a psychologist, always wanting to know the state of mind of his patients.

She nodded. “Of course. This is just for fun.”

“What kinds of toys did you bring for yourself, my dear?” He asked, genuinely curious now that he got his, what it was that she wanted him to do for her.

“Later,” she said, moving to sit beside him.

“Later?” He repeated. He enjoyed the duality of the woman, from a cold, and professional dominatrix to a sweet, almost shy woman of flesh and blood.

Again she tucked her hair behind her ear and said, “I saw Craw outside when I went down. Fed her some bread from the bakery on the corner. Think she misses you.”

“She'll be fine, she always is,” he assured her.

“I can't figure you out,” she said suddenly. “You're...odd.”

“You mean creepy?”

“I...don't think you're creepy anymore, just...I can't peg who you are.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It makes it a little strange to engage in this...thing we started.”

Jonathan Crane was quiet. Her question was something he had always struggled with himself. A person wasn't just this or that, they were a myriad of emotions and experiences. A good psychologist knew this.

But it was hard to analyze yourself. There were corners one didn't care to explore. And where most people avoided the dark corners, Crane avoid the light corners, the well lit corners where love and hope and joy blossomed.

He had never thought it was possible for him to feel any of those emotions, he was comfortable in his darkness and despair.

Who was he? He didn't know.

“If it's strange, then why are you doing it?” He inquired.

“Because I want to,” she said.

“Then don't worry about who I am.”

“Easy to say,” she argued. “The truth is, you know I won't hurt you, but--”

“I won't hurt you, Selina. I have no interest in it.” He stated clearly and firmly. “You saved my life and fed my crow, there's no reason for me to harm you.” As though to drive the point home for her, Crane shifted on the bed to reach his good hand out beside him to push her hair off her shoulder, leaning down to kiss her there.

Selina turned her head to look at him, but he was busy burying his face against her shoulder, inhaling the scent of her.

Was it vanilla? Jasmine? Both? It was something intangible, just out of reach of his senses.

Whatever her scent, it was something he chased and he knew he would forever be chasing, wanting more.

The man who possessed her heart would be a lucky man indeed, he thought.

That was a dangerous thought that he killed as soon as it was born, sitting back up and sighing. “You're sitting on my bad side,” he said a little coolly. “I can't get at you.”

“To do what?” She asked.

“Selina, we both know how sex works, it's a tit for tat game,” he replied.

She hopped over him and settled at his right hand side. Grinning to himself, he reached across his chest and cupped her breasts with his good hand. He leisurely explored them hefting them and rolling them around him his palm, loving how she arched her back for him.

“Tell me something about yourself that no one knows,” she suggested.

He looked up from her breasts, startled by what she said. “What? Now?”

Selina purred, head hanging back, eyes closed.

Leaning down he took a nipple into his mouth and nibbled and suckled for a moment in thought. Something about himself? What game was she playing at? He decided on something innocent that couldn't be used as fuel against him, pulling away and saying, “I love delta blues.”

“Really?”

“Old spirituals, gospel music, hymns,” he went on.

Selina levelled him with a strange look.

He attacked her breasts with more gusto, hoping to avoid further questioning on the matter. It was a truth, but one that he knew wouldn't come back and bite him in the ass.

“What else?” She murmured.

He pulled away from her breasts to eye her warily, but she didn't see him, her head was dropped back, eyes closed.

Carefully, he lowered his head, watching as his hand roamed over her stomach, feeling how soft and warm and firm it was.

“I don't like green peppers,” he admitted.

Levelling her chin, she looked at him with glittering eyes. “Who are you, Jon?”

“That's a rich and full question worthy of some thought,” he began. “We none of us are as simple a black or white. Can you sum yourself up in three sentences? A paragraph? A small note attached to a psychologist's case file?”

She inhaled. “I'm an orphan, raised in a Catholic orphanage, grew up to become a very good thief who loves cats and sparkly things. And I'm a sucker for unobtainable men. See? That wasn't so hard, Jon.”

“I knew you had to be either an unloved child or an orphan.” He said. “It's in the way you hoard money and jewels. You don't ever want to go hungry again.”

Sighing, Selina said, “finish this sentence, Jon. Hi, I'm Jonathan Crane and I'm--”

“--the product of an absent father, a weak willed mother, an overly abusive maternal line of dangerously religious Keeny women who used to punish me mentally and emotionally for every single thing I did as a child, whether it was right or wrong. At school my peers mocked me for being gangly and taller than the other students, the girls thought I was gross and the boys thought I was pathetic. I never loved anyone and I never will, because I understand that the mechanism within me to love has been stolen from me by circumstance and by experience. I don't know whether I'm a sociopath or just numb, but I do know I tread in the dark and the shadows without the grace of the angels. And I'm wondering why it is you crave knowledge of who I am so desperately at this, the worst possible moment.”

There was an eerie silence that fell over them, ruining any mood Crane had in his post orgasm bliss, while Selina tensed up and swallowed thickly.

“Would you like me to keep playing with your breasts or are we done here?” He demanded archly.

Instead of pulling away, Selina laughed in his face, dropping her head back to laugh deep from her belly.

Crane scowled a little. While beautiful in her mockery of him, he was still irked.

“That's the saddest shit I've ever heard,” she exclaimed. “Oh, Jon, you poor bastard.”

“I can't help but feel like you're being facetious with me,” he remarked dryly.

She levelled him with a wicked gaze, eyes shining, lips slightly parted and tugged up into a satisfied cat-like smirk. “How old were you before you felt your first tit, Jon? Were you a virgin into your twenties?”

“There's nothing wrong with being a virgin, Selina,” he argued. “In this throwaway modern world where you're judged merely on your sexual prowess or the size of your endowments, we have forgotten that in the end we all die the same. Voiding our bowels.”

“So...at least twenty-five then?” She asked, still chuckling at him.

“How old were you?” He snapped back.

“Thirteen,” she said. “And it was awful.”

“I was nineteen and in university, she made me finish on her stomach so she wouldn't get pregnant. We're always stupid when we're young, don't let anyone tell you any different. Mistakes are the creatures that linger in the shadows long after the hobgoblins retire.”

Selina slipped in closer to him, resting her hand on his chest, playing with the hair there. “Have you ever wondered what you'd be like if you lived a normal life?”

“What's normal for most is not normal for all, Selina. We are who we are, there's no parallel universe where you're a mother of three who shops at Walmart in her yoga pants and press on nails. That was never your fate, just as I was never meant for the tweed suits and the stale coffee of Introduction to Psych 101. Everything in our lives has been building to this, to where we are and how we got here.”

“Jon, the world is full of 7 billion people, there has to be at least one or two others out there with similar experiences to ours who have gone on to live the picket fence lifestyle.” She argued.

“Poor bastards.”

“What's wrong with normalcy? What's wrong with wanting a mundane, steady life?”

“If you love the steady life of a housewife, Selina. Then why are you here in an ivory tower, choking me to completion?” He demanded. “Neither of us are mundane people, we were never meant to be.”

“I almost want to buy a house in the suburbs just to prove you wrong, you smug asshole,” she said without any malice.

Crane smirked. “The day you move into a house in the suburbs is the day I take over the cowl from Batman.”

“I can't take your superior air,” she groaned. “Lay down, I'm going to shut you up.”

Unsure what she meant, but hoping it meant she was going to choke him again, he complied, gingerly easing down prone on the bed.

Instead, Selina moved to perch over his face delicately, smirking as she eased down, taking her throne.


	8. At My Most Beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie pops by to annoy Crane and Selina. Jon attempts to be gentlemanly and Selina tortures Crane in a new and inventive way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments, guys! You took the time to leave a comment and hey, I appreciate that. I really do.

#  Chapter 8: At My Most Beautiful

****Selina****

She woke to the sounds of a television playing low and stirred to a sitting position.

Beside her Crane was sleeping the deep sleep of someone worn out from sex and doped up with painkillers.

For a moment the predator instinct in her kicked in and she was ready to kill, but the sound of the television wasn't the threat.

Was it hers? It had to be.

Slipping out of bed, she pulled the first thing she found on and slipped out of her bedroom, heading down her hall towards her open living area.

The blue glow of her television illuminated the blank face of Edward Nygma as he sat on her couch.

Immediately easing from her attack mode, she sighed. “I regret ever giving you the code to my penthouse,” she whispered moving towards him.

“You're not usually home at night,” he returned coolly, eyes flickering from the TV to her. “Though judging from your attire, you've been occupied.” He grinned, pointedly folding his hands in his lap and asking, “is Jonathan still around?”

“Don't be a smart ass,” she snapped, flopping down beside him on the couch. “What are you watching?”

“A grown woman struggling to distract me from putting two and two together,” he beamed at her.

Selina frowned.

“Really though,” Eddie went on. “He's not the one for you, kitten.”

“Butt out of my sex life, Eddie,” she replied.

Really. The more people told her to steer clear of Jon, the more she wanted to defy them.

“Did you try that little trick with the thumb on him yet?” Eddie asked. “It sure worked for me.”

“Eddie you practically bent over for me the moment we started getting hot and heavy,” she said with a small grin.

He chuckled. “I miss you, kitten. Did you know?”

“You fucked me over. I learned the hard way about you, Eddie,” she growled.

“But what a rush, huh?” He picked up the remote and turned the volume on the television up as Elvis began to sing 'Love Me Tender'.

Turning to her, Eddie smiled softly and moved in towards her, closing the gap.

Selina stopped him with a hand to his chest. “Back off, Ed.”

“I'll be yours through all the years, til the end of time,” he crooned playfully.

Clapping a hand over his mouth, she shut him up.

Eddie wriggled his eyebrows as Elvis continued to sing on the screen before them.

“Go home, Eddie,” she cautioned, getting to her feet. “And stop using my penthouse as a vacation home when you think I'm out.”

Entering her bedroom, she hesitated in rejoining Crane on her bed. Falling asleep after a day of exhausting play was one thing, crawling back into the warmth of a shared bed was another level of intimate she didn't know she wasn't ready for.

Eddie on the couch or Crane in her bed?

Well, Crane hadn't fucked her over yet, so she decided he was the lesser of two evils.

Easing back under the blankets, she found herself wrapped up in the warmth only another living body could produce. It was probably the best feeling in the world after wrapping up in a blanket fresh from the dryer. The soft scent of Crane didn't hurt either.

He rolled away from her as best he could with his leg and his arm, something Selina found she appreciated. Crane wasn't all hands and limbs, he preferred to remain to himself, to keep to his side of the bed, to withdraw from her.

The fling she had with Eddie wasn't long, it wasn't even really much of anything beyond a teaming up and a few wild moments of shared intimacy. He needed her to get something for him and she was bored enough to do it.

They had sort of fallen into bed on a random happenstance a couple of times and it wasn't half bad. Eddie was a little more eager than Jon, a little less professional about the entire thing.

As soon as the heat started to come down on them, Eddie had set her up. He claimed it was because Batman went easier on her than he would have been on him.

It wasn't as painful as it could have been. Selina had long ago given up thinking she was going to find the bullshit known as true love.

But it had been fun while it lasted. Eddie was surprisingly fun to be around.

In another time she and Eddie had been in this exact bed, Eddie just as warm, if not warmer than Jon. His smooth, soft voice was whispering things to her, crooning playfully just as he had on the couch, arms wrapped around her, holding her against him, fingers brushing over her stomach, all grins and shining eyes.

Glancing over at Jon in the dark, she realized that maybe she could have used an embrace after all. Even if it was just a reassuring touch.

He was still on his side of the bed, keeping to himself.

Across the distance between them, Selina's hand crept, seeking him out. It stopped short.

Jon wasn't the right man to comfort her. Not now, probably not ever.

Curling up on her side, her back to him, she forced her eyes shut.

Go to sleep, Selina. She ordered herself.

 

* * *

 

By the time morning came around she woke feeling like she hadn't slept at all. Her head throbbed and her mouth felt dry. It was like a hangover, only without the fun of drinking the night before.

Jon was gone from his side, it was neatly made and cold.

Sitting up, she found Hecate kneeding at her hip and scratched the cat under her chin, smiling softly as the kitty rumbled. Nothing was better to her in the mornings that a warm, rumbling kitty.

Slipping out of bed, she padded off down the hall needing caffeine first and foremost, before her shower.

In the living room she found Crane standing over a sleeping Eddie on the couch, sipping calmly at a mug of steaming hot tea.

With Medea and Circe sleeping on top of Eddie's form, the entire couch was occupied and the master of fear looked mildly puzzled, but remained sipping at his drink even as she moved to stand beside him.

Crane silently offered her his mug and she took it, taking a dainty sip.

“Did you hear about Killer Moth?” Crane asked, eyes still on Eddie's softly snoring form.

“No.” She took another sip of his tea. It was sweetened just right.

“Kidnapped the Mayor's daughter last night.” Crane scoffed. “Ozzie called this morning, woke me up, wanted to let you know that the GCPD will be out in full force tonight. Is he just...going to sleep here then?” He gestured to Eddie with his chin.

“Hmm?” Selina wandered away into the kitchen to make more tea.

Crane hobbled after her. “Ozzie gives you head's up whenever things are tight?”

“Well,” she began putting the kettle on. “When you're nice to people, Jon, people are nice back.”

“And Edward Nygma sleeping on your couch falls under this?” He asked.

“He knows my door code and lets himself in now and then _apparently_.” She said.

“Do you want me to get rid of him?”

Selina turned away from the stove to mock swoon for him. “Aw, Jon. Are you getting protective of me?”

“No, I just enjoy scaring people awake.” Crane replied. "Edward's screams amuse me."

“You've never done that with me,” she pointed out.

“Yet,” he added with a calm look.

“Let him sleep, you can kick him out next time.”

Crane eased down at the kitchen table, grunting a little as his leg was jerked wrong.

“Do you want a painkiller?” She asked.

“No, I need to learn to deal with this leg. The painkillers cloud my judgment.”

There was a decidedly intense look in Jon's eyes, something Selina had missed earlier. Had he always looked like he wanted to devour her whole or was this a look Crane gave people he slept with the morning after?

She found she didn't quite know the answer to that. Pre-sex Crane had sort of blurred in her memory, it was hard to remember how he looked at her before, how he acted, how his dark, raspy voice sounded.

Turning back to making herself a mug of tea in order to distract her from treacherous thoughts, Selina sighed at her own reaction to his look, the heat that stroked at her cheeks just from Jonathan Crane's haunted eyes had her feeling like a fool.

Silly girl, she heard Pam's voice in her head.

What the hell did one do with a man you slept with and couldn't kick out on his ass? She wasn't used to being trapped like this. Cornered by reminders of her nightly activities, left to deal with a ghost of her bad decisions.

Even Bruce knew well enough to leave by the next morning, knowing Selina didn't deal very well with being smothered.

Her instincts told her to continue fucking Jon, if it never ended then there wouldn't be a morning after.

But Eddie on her couch sort of threw cold water on that plan.

So, instead, she inhaled deeply and steeled herself, using that stiff upper lip attitude ingrained on her by the nuns at the orphanage.

Thrusting a hand through her thick, dark hair, she turned to Crane and found him still eyeing her with that frighteningly focused gaze.

“Do you always look at women like you want to eat them?” She demanded coolly.

“Am I looking at you like that, Selina dear?” He inquired flatly.

“You're certainly not looking at me like a tepid acquaintance.”

“Does it bother you?” He asked, still remaining steady.

Picking up a dishtowel, she tossed it over his face and stepped into the living room, if Eddie was awake then she wouldn't have to deal with Crane.

She smacked Eddie on the cheek.

“Wake up, come on,” she said. “This isn't a bed and breakfast.”

He shot upright, the cats jumping off him wildly.

Peering about in confusion, Eddie cleared his throat and reached up to tousle his wine red hair in mild amusement, grinning up lazily at her. “Why, kitten. I was just dreaming of you.”

“That better have been a PG rated dream or so help me, Eddie,” she began. A fight with Eddie was good, it meant distraction and perhaps a better use of her passions.

Edward Nygma narrowed his pretty-as-a-girl's robin's egg blue eyes at her studiously, before tilting his head back smugly. “Oh...now that is a familiar tone in your voice, Lina.” His eyes slid from her face to a space just beyond her left shoulder, where she had a sneaking suspicion Jon was standing. “Good morning, Jonathan!”

“Edward,” Crane returned. “You have drool on your chin.”

Eddie wiped at the drool with the back of his hand, saying, “inconsequential. How was your night, old friend? Did you get _up_ to any _mischief_?”

“With two out of four limbs out of commission, I doubt I could get up to anything,” Crane stated.

“Mmm,” Eddie made a small sound in the back of his throat that made Selina's hand curl into a fist.

He was good looking enough, but more often than not his face was just...punchable more than anything.

“Breakfast? Shall we?” Eddie asked, clapping his hands on his thighs and pushing to his feet.

As Edward passed by Crane, Jonathan's metal crutch swung out and cracked him in the shin.

“Fucking hell,” Edward groaned, leaping sideways.

“Sorry,” Crane offered easily. “I'm adjusting to this damned thing.”

As Edward hobbled into the kitchen, Crane offered her a slight tilt of his head, like something out of a Jane Austen novel, an unspoken communication both dignified and subtle.

Selina smiled a little in return.

* * *

  


“Well, it was charming,” Eddie said as he stood at the door, grinning broadly at Selina. “I haven't seen either one of you in months.”

“If Selina's anything like me, she's been artfully avoiding you the entire time,” Crane murmured from behind her.

Selina smiled, turning it into a farewell smile for Eddie. “It was nice to see you, Eddie.”

“Edward, please. Yes, I shall have to visit more often,” he returned. “I mean, it's not everyday my best friend and my former lover are residing under the same roof.”

Selina's blood turned to ice, before boiling over and she had to physically swallow down the urge to push Eddie down onto the floor of the hallway just outside her penthouse and slam the door closed.

Instead, she managed a firm 'goodbye' and closed the door gently on his smug face.

She turned to face Crane, wondering how he would react to the knowledge that she had at one time...for a period of about a month, let Edward Nygma inside her.

He was relatively calm.

No jealousy on his face was odd to her. Men tended to be possessive creatures.

“He puts you on edge,” he remarked instead, limping into the kitchen.

“He fucked me over a while back, I don't trust him much anymore,” she said, following him.

“Edward does that, it's his modus operandi.” Crane eased against the counter beside him with a wince.

“You should go for a lie down,” she pointed out, turning to the fridge. “Rest yourself.”

“I've been lying down so much it's making me sick,” he argued. “I need something to do with my hands to occupy my restless mind is all.”

Selina reached for two bottles of water for the both of them, nearly dropping them as she turned to find Crane standing behind her quite suddenly, his eyes just as piercing as they were before she woke Eddie up, his towering form making her feel very small.

“We could always get you a puzzle or--”

His mouth was on hers, cutting her suggestion off, his free hand sliding around to cup the back of her head, his crutch falling to the floor with a loud clack.

Selina sloppily tried to set the water bottles on the counter, but one rolled off and joined his crutch on the floor as she wrapped both arms around his neck to deepen the kiss, before she pulled away panicked.

“I haven't showered yet,” she murmured. “And you should take one of your sponge baths.”

“Selina, a little morning breath and some greasy hair might make a lesser man quake in his shoes, but it has yet to put me off a woman,” he growled, nipping at her bottom lip as she turned her head away and pushed him back gently. “Besides, we'll only be dirty again soon enough if I do my job properly.”

She smiled. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“You have ten,” he snarled. “Then I'm climbing into that shower with you.”

“Don't be stupid,” she said sternly. “You can wait twenty minutes and if you can't I can always put a ring on it again.” Her hand slid down his stomach and squeezed gently at the front of his pants.

He inhaled a sharp hiss.

“And if you're good, I'll help clean you.” She said, bending down to pick up his crutch and the bottle of water that had fallen.

“Fine,” he replied. “I'll make myself useful while I wait, shall I?”

 

* * *

 

What Crane had meant by making himself useful was to – apparently – clean her bedroom.

As she emerged from the steam of a good, hot shower, she found him lying on her bed reading. All the clothes she had tried on and piled on a chair in the corner instead of hanging back up were hung and sorted.

“Did...did you clean my room?”

“It was driving me mad to sleep in a messy room,” he replied dryly, not looking up from his book.

She scoffed. “You live in...what? An abandoned hospital? A mausoleum? Somewhere dark and dank? You really can't judge me.”

“An old publishing warehouse is where I hang my scythe these days,” he said. “And it's dilapidated, but clean and organized, thank you very much.”

“Jon, I never had a father, and I don't need one now.” She argued lightly, moving to the closet.

“I certainly hope you don't need me to be your father figure, Selina dear, because it would rather ruin my plans for the afternoon with you,” he retorted, finally dropping his book to level her with a simple look.

“Gross,” she said. “Come on, let's get you bathed.”

“Suddenly you're all business again,” he remarked. “Did some thinking in the shower?”

“Yeah, I did some thinking and realized you're an utterly hopeless geek who cleans other people's bedrooms,” she teased. “None of that is attractive to me at all.”

Crane smiled, just a little twinkle in his eye and a quirk at the corners of his mouth. “Pity,” he said, “because you're stuck with me for a few months. Whatever will you do with me?”

“Certainly not what you're thinking if you keep cleaning up my room,” she shot back.

 


End file.
